liEGEiis Educational Ide4s 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No... 

Shelt-ti-l-3g 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



HEGEL'S 



Educational Ideas 



^, 



WILLIAM M. BRYANT, M. A., LL.D. 

Instructor in Psychology and Ethics, St. Louis Normal and High 
School. Author of " The World-Energy and Its Self-Conserva ° 
tion;" " Ihe Philosophy of I andscape Painting ; " "Syl- 
labus of Psychology ; " Syllabus of Ethics," Etc., Etc. 




, AUG '^01896 



WERNER SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 



u^ 



(^\ 



Copyright, 1896, 
By William M. Bryant. 



Educational Ideas. 



"Mo... 




CONTENTS 



I. Preliminary View 15 

II. Hegel's Personality and Envi- 
ronment 25 

III. General Educational View Im- 

plied IN THE Hegelian System 32 

IV. "From the Simple to the Com- 

plex " 44 

V. " The Ages OF Man" 52 

VI. General Notion of Education . 'j-j 

VII. Instruction— Its Character . 89 

VIII. Instruction— Its Process ... 93 
IX. Instruction — Its Means— A. 

Language no 

X. Instruction— Its Means— B. 

Form 157 

XI. Instruction— Its Means— C. 

The Study of Process ... 171 

XII. Instruction— Its Method . . 183 

XIII. Discipline 187 

XIV. Refinement 200 



PREFACE. 



The concept at the heart of the science 
current at the present day is expressed in 
the word ** Evolution." So far as it refers 
directly to the inorganic world, this con- 
cept takes shape in the expressions : " Con- 
servation of Energy " and " Correlation of 
Forces." As applied to the organic king- 
dom, the same concept assumes the aspect 
indicated by the phrase '' Natural Selec- 
tion." 

Thus far the science of the day has to 
do chiefly with those processes — i. e., con- 
crete relations — which are unfolded in and 
through forms occupying space. These 
forms, acting directly upon the sense-or- 
gans, appeal immediately to the sensuous 
consciousness. In the main, therefore, 
scientific works within this sphere consist 
of vivid and presumably precise descrip- 
tions of phenomena. Not infrequently 
apology is offered for adding to the de- 
5 



6 Preface. 

scription serious discussion of the '' ab- 
stract " principles involved in the phe- 
nomena. 

Nevertheless, though the idea of evolu- 
tion has so generally appeared in merely 
implicit rather than explicit or actually 
reasoned-out form, in treatises that have 
passed as '* scientific," this very fact has 
not been without its compensation. There 
has indeed been positive advantage in the 
pictorial and dogmatic form in which this 
central feature in the thought of the time 
has been so generally presented. As pic 
torial it has appealed directly to the im- 
agination. As dogmatically expressed, it 
has appealed to the element of faith inhe- 
rent in the human mind. Thus it has 
rapidly made its way into general recogni- 
tion and acceptance. 

The pedagogical intimations contained 
in all this are of the greatest value ; and 
we are now in full swing of the attempt to 
possess ourselves of that value. So eager 
have we been in this attempt, besides, 
that many of us are even now but just be- 



Preface. J 

ginning to suspect the gravity of the dan- 
gers it involves. The aspects of the world 
appealing to the sensuous consciousness 
have exercised such fascination upon us 
that for the time being the reflective con- 
sciousness has been held in abeyance — 
maintained in a state of comparative '' in- 
hibition." We have thus unawares actu- 
ally been delivering ourselves over to the 
relatively rudimentary phase of conscious- 
ness as to an infallible guide, and neglect- 
ing the cultivation of the more adequate 
phase consisting of the reflective conscious- 
ness. This, too, on the assumption that 
somehow the latter must inevitably land 
us in the limbo of hopeless contradictions. 
Yet the divine instinct of Reason in us 
is not wholly to be suppressed ; and its 
protest against the attempt to impale 
thought upon the microscropist's needle, 
and by the magic of some new X-ray 
power compel the non-extended to as- 
sume sensuously visible form, has at 
length taken the special direction of seri- 
ous psychological research. From our 



8 Preface. 

exuberant contemplation of material forms 
we are turning with increasing evidence 
of anxiety to the consideration of mental 
modes. 

But even this instinctive struggle illus- 
trates in most impressive fashion the spell 
under which the mind of the time is still 
more or less completely bound. Ignoring 
the fact that mind can be known by mind 
alone, and be known alone to mind, we 
have been assured that a "new" psychol- 
ogy has taken the place of the " old ;" 
that the true psychology consists in a 
mass of " truths " attained through a study 
of the nervous system ; in short, we have 
been asked, with much show of serious- 
ness, to accept a ** psychology without 
the psyche." 

By degrees, however, we are beginning 
to recognize that only the workings of an 
actual psyche could give rise even to such 
'' psychology ;" and so, grateful for the nu- 
merous, and often helpful, clews the '* new 
psychology " affords us, we are beginning 
to brace ourselves to the really serious 



Preface. 9 

task of studying mind as Mind — mind in 
its essential, universal, typical nature. 

Most helpful of all the clews of which 
modern science has emphasized the value, 
indeed, is this : that spiritual as well as phy- 
sical ^Reality can be known only through 
its appearance — which in truth is not so 
far from saying with Spinoza, that "at- 
tributes are what constitute the essence 
of Substance." So that if we are really to 
know mind, we must observe mind itself. 

But this throws us back upon the pro- 
cesses of mind as involved in the ac- 
tual normal development of mind. In 
other words, it refers us to the whole pro- 
cess of education in its widest sense, as 
involving the essential facts to be co-ordi- 
nated and given accurate valuation in any 
really vital psychology. And the recipro- 
cal of this is that if we would really com- 
prehend the true significance of education, 
whether in respect of its aim or of its 
means or of its method, we must be guided 

* And it may turn out that the latter is only an 
aspect of the former. 



lo Preface. 

in our study by the principles of a sound 
psychology. 

Clearly then the study of Natural Sci- 
ence forces us forward to the study of 
psychology; while the study of psychol- 
ogy necessarily leads us on to thoroughly 
re-examine education as constituting in its 
total range the positive process in which 
the phenomena of mind may be traced, 
not only in their essential, vital relation to 
each other, but also in their actual con- 
crete evolution. In other words, we are 
driven to consider the total, universal na- 
ture of mind, both in its inner and in its 
outer phases. And this again necessarily 
involves the study of all the essential as- 
pects of relation into which the individual 
mind can enter with other things. 

Finally, when this survey has been com- 
pleted, it is discovered that Education is 
the process of developing the individual 
mind through bringing it into ever increas- 
ingly complex actual — and that means 
conscious — relation with the total World 
or Universe, as the expression of the one 



Preface. 1 1 

ultimate Reason or primal Cause of all, 
including the individual mind itself. 

Throughout this whole research, as we 
may now observe, there is at every step 
increasingly imperative need of safe guid- 
ance. Such safe guidance, again, is to be 
found only in the organically unfolded 
thought of the world (universe), as ex- 
pressed in the teachings of the great sys- 
tematizers who have marked the great 
epochs in the evolution of human intelli- 
gence. Among these, Aristotle in ancient 
times, and Hegel in modern times, have 
presented the most comprehensive and 
consistent systematizations of human 
thought. 

Like Aristotle, Hegel has been rejected 
by the impatient, and despised by the 
thoughtless. Nevertheless the truth re- 
mains, that whoever would set Aristotle 
or Hegel or any other great thinker aside 
as " antiquated," must first master such 
thinker's total thought, and show its im- 
perfections. Otherwise he but exposes 
his own emptiness and conceit. 



1 2 Preface > 

Thus the great and growing interest of 
the present day in mind, and in education 
as the process of the normal unfolding of 
mind, is inevitably referring us to the great 
thinkers for stimulus and guidance in our 
task of deepening and revising our knowl- 
edge of what mind essentially is, as well 
as of the true mode of its development. 
In this deeply significant and promising 
movement thoughtful minds are gravitat- 
ing more and more definitely toward He- 
gel as the one who thus far has presented 
in clearest and most adequate form the 
true philosophic ground of all science and 
of all educational work, rightly so called. 
And if we are, as it were, predestined to 
go to school to him, it is because he obe- 
diently went to school to all the world, 
and learned from them the central clew to 
the actual evolution of the thought of the 
race as progressively reflecting the thought 
of the eternal Mind, which again consti- 
tutes the absolute law of the development 
of the individual human mind. 

The following essay is an attempt to in- 



Preface. 1 3 

terpret Hegel's theory with direct refer- 
ence to the educational needs of our own 
time. It is believed that this theory will 
be found to justify whatever is really good 
in the " New Education," and also to fur- 
nish adequate ground for the rejection of 
whatever it presents of the spurious and 
merely novel. 

We may add, finally, that Hegel is not 
properly to be looked upon as a competi- 
tor with Pestalozzi and Froebel and Her- 
bart for the honors of educational leader- 
ship. Rather he presents in his system of 
philosophy as a whole a universal scheme 
of education in which each of these great 
reformers finds his proper place and due 
relation. If this scheme is not found in 
the present essay, the fault must be cred- 
ited to the present writer. 

I am indebted to my son. Max Miiller 
Bryant, for valuable assistance in reading 
the proof. 



HEGEL'S 
EDUCATIONAL IDEAS. 



I. 

PRELIMINARY VIEW 



It is a matter of frequent remark that 
Hegel was one of those fortunate indi- 
viduals who come to be born " in the full- 
ness of time." He lived at the culmi- 
nation of a great epoch in the spiritual 
history of mankind. 

In the sixteenth century Luther had 
given articulate expression to the univer- 
sal sense of protest against the demand 
for unreasoning submission to mere au- 
thority in morals and religion. In the 
seventeenth century Descartes gave utter- 
ance to the same spirit of protest, though 
by him the protest was directed against 
unreasoning submission to mere authority 
15 



1 6 HegeVs Educatiojial Ideas. 

within the realm of speculative science. 
In the eighteenth century the rising spirit 
of Individualism gradually assumed politi- 
cal form, and at length burst forth in the 
French Revolution. 

In the mind of Locke this principle had 
developed, not so much in the form of a 
universal principle applicable to all men 
alike, as in the form of a staid, respectable 
self-assertion appropriate to a member of 
a cultivated English household.^ Rous- 
seau, while borrowing from Locke, yet 
wrenched the idea of individualistic right 
and individual destiny completely free 
from the limitations of the mild form in 
which Locke had rendered it familiar to 
the English-speaking people, and with 
fierce energy proclaimed it as the central 
characteristic native in every man. 

It was thus that Rousseau came at once 
to be recognized as the apostle of the rev- 
olutionary spirit, and that he proved to 
be the actual and specially appropriate 

* Cf. Erdmann, Historv of PJnlosophy (Trans. Wil- 
liston S. Hough), II., no. 



Preiimi'nary View. 17 

prophet of the Revolution. If, as he 
taught, individual man is already good 
when he comes from the hand of nature, 
and is only ruined by Society, then, as an 
individual, man has the right to turn upon 
and destroy Society. 

Such reckless intellectualism has its off- 
set in the devoutly ethical, but still essen- 
tially individualistic, spirit of Kant, who 
summed up the whole of philosophy in its 
practical import in the declaration that, 
in all the world there is nothing good 
''except a good will."* But also, it is im- 
portant to remember that, by a *' good 
will," he meant not the mere individual 
will, as it comes directly from the hand of 
nature (Rousseau's view), but rather the 
individual will, enlightened and discip- 
lined through the practical unfolding of 
its normal social relations in the full range 
of all their normal aspects. 

Let us note now that all these elements, 
revolutionary and restraining, were already 

^ Kant's Theory of Ethics (Trans. Abbott), 4tb 
ed., p. 9. 
2 



HegeVs Edncatio7ial Ideas. 



in full swing of seething ferment when, in 
1770, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 
was ushered into individual existence in 
this world of ours. Such storm-brewing 
atmosphere he breathed from his infancy. 
As a youth he witnessed the bursting of 
the storm, and felt through his whole be- 
ing the awakening force of the shock. In 
his maturer years he saw the full measure 
of destructiveness involved in the unre- 
strained fury of the mere crude natural 
individualism of Rousseau. It was thus 
that he was led to penetrate to the deep- 
est secret of that transfigured individual- 
ism which never emerges into fullness of 
definition save in the character of a sec- 
ond birth. And this spiritual regenera- 
tion in turn is possible in no other way 
than through conscious and deliberate 
self-restraint within the limits of a rational 
social organization. 

Naturally enough, the youthful Hegel, 
like the youthful Goethe, was dazzled by 
the splendor of the Titan, Napoleon. 
Even as late as 1806 he refers to him as 



Preliminary View. 19 

" this World-Soul."^ On the other hand 
the mature Hegel, like the mature Goethe, 
turned resolutely away from the Titan, 
and paid his deeper homage to the actual 
Divinity, which he more and more clearly 
saw to be struggling into ever richer de- 
grees of self-realization in humanity as a 
whole, and also in each individual member 
of the race. 

Such may serve as a hint in explanation 
of the fact that the writings of Hegel 
are everywhere so strikingly pervaded with 
the calmly reasoned assurance of the di- 
vine nature of man as genuine individual 
Person. Equally, too, does the inevita- 
ble inference, that because of this divine 
nature man as individual is immortal and 
weighted with an infinite destiny, appear 
as the fundamental tone in every line. 

Thus Hegel may rightly be regarded as 
the representative of absolute Individual- 
ism, in which the individual human soul 
is seen as at once the vibrant focus of all 
divine influences, and as the infinitely pro- 

*Thaulovv, HegeT s Ansichten, III., 165. 



20 Hegel's Ediicatio7ial Ideas. 

phetic germ of all divine qualities, and 
hence, as the central object of interest in 
all the universe, so far as the universe is 
viewed as a process of evolution from 
lower to higher forms. 

Hence, also, the whole of the Hegelian 
system is the absolute denial of exclusive 
right on the part of any '' royal " person- 
aee to declare of himself, " I am the state," 
because the whole of that system is the 
absolute declaration of right on the part 
of each and every member of the Jiuinan 
race to make and verify that declaration 
of and for himself. 

And because Right and Duty are but 
obverse aspects of one and the same rela- 
tion, it is equally the duty of each and 
every member of the race to practically 
assert the organic oneness of the State 
Avith himself. For true Royalty inheres 
in every human being ; a Royalty bearing 
within it the inalienable, because divine. 
Right to all the conditions, negative and 
positive, needful for his own complete 
self-unfolding. 



Preliminary View. 21 

Such, in brief, may be taken as a pre- 
liminary intimation of the central practi- 
cal characteristic of the Hegelian philoso- 
phy. And because this in turn is but the 
summarizing and fusing into organic unity 
of all the vital results of the entire ferment 
of the spirit of Individualism in its deep- 
est import, Hegel may be called in respect 
of this, as long ago he was called in respect 
of the whole field of speculative thought : 
" the Harvester " — the one who had only to 
gather, and arrange in bundles, and store, 
the ripened fruit of other men's labors. 

*'Only!" His wisdom was nothing 
more than that of selection, and arrange- 
ment, and discovery of vital relations, and 
bringing to view of essential values, and 
showing, as had never been shown before, 
that the world is one infinite organic 
Whole, whose inner creative principle is 
absolute, eternal Mind, and whose outer 
form is but the manifestation of that Mind 
— such manifestation culminating in con- 
scious units identical in nature with that 
Mind. That is all. 



22 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

In fact, it is just this view that the world 
is the product of Mind and cuhninates 
in mind that constitutes the real clew to 
Hegel's educational principles ; and equal- 
ly it is this that explains how it happens 
that throughout Hegel's writings are found 
everywhere references to educational needs 
and conditions and appliances ; so much so 
that one may very well conclude that 
every word Hegel deemed worth the 
trouble of recording was set down because 
to him it pointed the way to the education 
of man in the sense of the unfolding of 
the divine nature in each individual man. 

It would even lead us to suspect that 
Hegel intended his whole system to find 
its practical culmination in the systematic 
exposition of the fundamental principles 
underlying the aims, the means and the 
methods of Education. And in fact, a 
letter from Hegel to Niethammer indicates 
his intention of writing out what he sig- 
nificantly calls a Staatspddogogik; that is, 
a science of Education in which education 
is viewed as on the one side, a function of 



Preliminary Vieiu. 23 

the social organism, and on the other, as 
the individual's own development through 
his reactions upon the whole round of the 
institutional life in which he is involved.* 

Nor can we doubt that, as Thaulow 
confidently believes,f Hegel would have 
carried out this design but for the sudden 
termination of his life, while yet in the 
full vigor of his mental power. 

In the following essay, I shall attempt 
to present, in as clear, connected and con- 
cise a form as possible, what I conceive to 
have been Hegel's educational ideas, as 
these appear by way of seemingly inci- 
dental remark and illustration scattered 
throughout his various works ; and I shall 
also endeavor to show how, when brought 
together, these occasional notes of his on 
the subject of education simply expand 
into detailed form the central idea of the 
human mind in the normal process of its 
own development — the idea which, as al- 
ready indicated, constitutes the practical, 

* Cf. Rosenkranz : HegeT s Leben, p. 254, 
f HegeVs Ansichten, III., 5. 



24 Hegel's Ediicatio7ial Ideas. 

living core of Hegel's whole system of 
philosophy. It need hardly be added that 
what I shall have to say must of course 
assume, in large measure, the character of 
interpretation. How far the interpreta- 
tion is faithful to the original the critical 
reader will judge for himself. 

Before entering upon this, however, it 
will be well to bring before our minds, 
though it be ever so briefly, Hegel's own 
personality. 



Ht\^cl's Personality and Environment. 25 

II. 

HEGEL'S PERSONALITY AND ENVIRON- 
MENT. 

Already in the sixteenth century the 
Protestant ferment forced upon the ances- 
tors of Hegel the choice between convic- 
tion and comfort — between inward peace 
coupled with outward struggle on the one 
hand, and outward calm, with inward un- 
rest, on the other. The choice was in 
favor of the deeper conviction of Right ; 
and this involved the breaking up of es- 
tablished associations and the entering 
into new relations, the emigration from 
Catholic Austria into Protestant Schwabia. 

Lying in a valley, but commanding an 
extended view, is the capital city, Stutt- 
gart. Here, on the 27th of August, 1770, 
was born the child who was to become the 
philosopher in whose educational ideas we 
are now centering our interest. 

Everywhere man is more or less dis- 
tinctly the child of Mother Earth; and 



26 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

the Schwabian character has a pecuHarity 
of texture due to the Schwabian land. So 
that Rosenkranz' reference to Hegel's 
'' ticfcn dcht Schwdbischen, Innigkcit,'''^ to 
his deep, genuine Schwabian Internality, 
or tendency to serious reflection, is by no 
means merely a figure of speech. 

Similarly, on the other hand, there can 
be no doubt that the passing of his early 
life in the city which constituted, not only 
the focus of all the interests of Schwabia, 
but also one of the foci of the more gen- 
eral interests of Protestant Germany, 
served as an offset to the revery-inviting 
quiet of the beautiful mountain-bordered 
valley, and stimulated the mind of the 
gifted boy to inquire into the secrets of 
the currents of human interest that were 
ceaselessly mingling in the life of the 
town. And this the more as the employ- 
ment of his father in the public service 
brought the family into direct and varied 
relation with many persons of high official 
rank — persons constituting the immediate 

* HcgeVs Leben, p. 5. 



Hegel's Personality and Environment. 27 

embodiment of actual current public in- 
terests. 

Under these circumstances it was but 
natural that there should develop in such 
a mind as that of the youthful Hegel an 
"all-sided attentiveness," amounting to a 
special alertness as toward every sort of 
aim and activity. Nor was it less natural 
that through his native " Schwabian inter- 
nality " this all-sided attentiveness should 
deepen into a lively desire for systema- 
tized knowledge along every line of in- 
quiry open to the human mind. 

Neither can we doubt that the clerical 
precision and formal finish of the official 
life with which he was surrounded during 
his early years impressed him deeply ; and 
so much so as to account in part for the I 
pains-taking, methodical way in which 
throughout his whole life he pursued his 
studies. Especially would this seem to be 
the case in respect of his voluminous note- 
books. Nor does it seem unreasonable to 
suppose also that this entered as a subor- 
dinate but appreciable factor into his high 



28 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

estimate of formal finish and methodical 
completeness and consistency in the work- 
ing out of the details of his System of 
Philosophy. However this may be, the 
fact is beyond dispute that Hegel is, above 
\ everything else, just the systematizer of 
human knowledge. 

In this respect he is the man whose 
work, more than that of any other in the 
history of human thought, is rich in its 
suggestiveness for the teacher. For it is 
the teacher above all others, to whom, as 
such, Method is the very breath of life. 
And this because it is of the very essence 
of the daily life of the teacher to bring 
other minds to a consciousness of the true 
method of TJiinking as the process of the 
inner definition of life, and of Doings as 
the process of its outer definition. 

Eager, yet methodical, enthusiastic, yet 
self-contained and logical, Hegel very 
early proved himself to be a representa- 
tive at once of the spirit of the highly 
sophisticated eighteenth century *' En- 
lightenment " and of the buoyant spirit of 



HegeVs Personality and Environment. 29 

classical antiquity. Awake in the Present 
he was also awake to the Past. So that 
from the outset his instinct of methodical 
completeness, stimulated as we have seen, / 
forced him forward to read the Past in the 
light of the Present, and to interpret the 
Present as the normal fruit of the Past. 
The very conditions of his own mental 
evolution led him on by a logical necessity 
to the unfolding of his own famous '' his- 
torical method," and hence to the speedy 
transcending of the over-confident spirit 
of the Ajifkldriing, 

Thus his school-days were occupied, not 
with mere mechanical conning and recit- 
ing of prescribed lessons. Rather the 
most significant picture presented to us in 
those days is that of Hegel, alone in his 
private room, working with quiet, unre- 
mitting intensity over books iiot assigned 
as text. These were by no means books 
of *' light literature." They were such 
books as the Psalms, the Iliad, Cicero's 
Letters, Euripides, Aristotle's Ethics, the 
CEdipus of Sophocles, Epictetus, Thucy- 



30 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

dides ; besides modern works in history, 
mathematics, science, art, criticism, phil- 
osophy and theology. From all of which 
he made careful and extended extracts. 

Throughout all this, too, there was the 
gathering force of the prophetic instinct 
that was at length to unfold into such 
marvelously symmetrical and richly varied 
realization in the form of explicit and sus- 
tained thought. 

For our present purpose, too, it is of es- 
pecial moment to notice that even so early 
as his fourteenth year the central signifi- 
cance of education was already dawning 
upon him ; so that from that time forward 
he collected in his note-books significant 
sayings of various authors upon this theme, 
and more and more recorded his own 
ever-deepening reflections. 

Thus, though we have no separate work 
upon education from the hand of Hegel, 
yet reflections upon the subject as gath- 
ered out of his works by Thaulow and pub- 
lished in 1853-54 cover some thousand 
closely printed pages ! 



HegeVs Pe7'S07iality and Ejivironment. 31 

To all which we must add the further 
remark that the divided and helpless state 
of Germany, during the earlier part of 
Hegel's active life, could not but have the 
effect of throwing him back upon and in- 
tensifying his native reflectiveness or 
** Schwabian internality," and in this indi- 
rect way could not but prove a really strong 
factor in his wonderfully thorough-going 
analysis of the possibilities and ultimate 
significance of the individual life in its 
subtler spiritual aspects. Such analysis, 
besides, could not fail to deepen and clar- 
ify his conviction as to the supreme signifi- 
cance of education. And as a matter of 
fact we do find him expressing himself upon 
this subject in that troublous period in the 
following positive terms: '^ The importance 
of a good education was never more mani- 
fest than under the conditions of our time. 
The inner treasure which parents give 
their children through a good education 
and through the use of institutions of 
learning are indestructible and retain their 
worth under all conditions."* 

* From an Address of Hegel's. 



HegeVs Educational Ideas. 



III. 

GENERAL EDUCATIONAL VIEW IMPLIED 
IN THE HEGELIAN SYSTEM. 

Of course no pretense can here be made 
to outline the system of philosophy devel- 
oped by Hegel. At best we can do no 
more than indicate its central aim. The 
system itself is an organic whole, no part 
of which can really be comprehended save 
with reference to the whole. 

The first draught of the system was 
struck out at a white heat in the " Phen- 
omenology of Mind,'' a volume of about 
six hundred pages. After more fully elab- 
orating the system, at a later period, Hegel 
undertook its condensation (while still pre- 
serving its now explicitly differentiated as- 
pects) into a compass manageable by stu- 
dents. The result was the ^' E.ncyclopcEdia " 
in three volumes — {a) the Logic, {b) the 
Philosophy of Nature, (r) the Philosophy 
of Mind — amounting in all to fifteen hun- 
dred pages. 



General Educational View. 33 

{a) The Logic presents the system of 
thoitgJit as such. That is, it presents in 
systematic arrangement the fundamental 
categories of Reason, beginning with the 
simplest, and showing by the famous 
''dialectical method" how, from its very 
nature, mind cannot rest in such simple, 
vacuous forms ; but by its own inherent 
energy necessarily unfolds into ever richer 
phases of consciousness until it reaches the 
idea of an eternally self-contained, self- 
conscious, self-active Energy, which, by 
that fact, is an eternally self-realizing, and 
therefore infinitely creative. Mind. 

{p) The Philosophy of Nature is the in- 
terpretation of the phenomena of tJie 02iter 
IV or Id of nature, on the one hand, as con- 
stituting nothing else than the infinitely 
manifold forms in which that creative En- 
ergy forever manifests itself ; and on the 
other, as leading up to and culminating in 
that subtle complex of physical energy in 
which consists the human body — the 
medium in and through which the human 
soul emerges into conscious being. 
3 



y 



34 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

(c) The PJiilosopJiy of Mind is the inter- 
pretation of the phenomena of the imier 
world of mind. It traces the evolution of 
the human mind through its merely natural 
qualities — that is, the qualities determined 
through external, natural influences — finds 
it emerging into individualized form as 
*' feeling soul," and again unfolding into 
the ** actual soul," which already begins to 
distinguish itself from its embodiment, 
and to command the latter, and thus al- 
ready to give to it a significance properly 
described as ideal. Thus man stands erect, 
not because it is physiologically " natural " 
for him to do so, but only because he wills 
the upright attitude. 

But this is only initial. The Philosophy 
of Mind traces further the fundamental 
forms of eo7iseiotisness, emphasizing espec- 
ially the contrast between the merely sejt- 
siioiis consciousness, on the one hand, and 
on the other, ^^//'-consciousness, which, in 
its highest term, is the thinking conscious- 
ness, or Reason. 

Following this a summary of Psychology 



Ge)ie?'al Educational View. 35 

closes the treatment of the '' Subjective 
Mind;" i. e., Mind as self-related mdi- 
vidiial. 

But this necessarily implies an objective 
aspect of mind ; that is, it implies the out- 
ward manifestation of mind whose inner 
or subjective characteristics have thus far 
been considered. It is the consideration 
of mind in this phase which gives rise to 
the estimation of the practical relations 
into which the individual mind enters, and 
to the very brief summarizing of what 
Hegel presents more fully in his PJiilo- 
sopJiy of Right — that is, ethics from the 
objective or '' practical " point of view. 

The last thirty pages indicate the vari- 
ous aspects of *' Absolute Mind," or Spirit. 
By which Hegel means the universal, ideal 
forms or degrees in which the human mind 
realizes its highest characteristics and finds 
its purest satisfaction. These forms are 
(i) Art, to which Hegel elsewhere devotes 
three volumes ; (2) Religion, to which he 
gives two volumes, and (3) Philosophy, to 
which he devoted his life, and to which 



36 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

the whole of his works, in eighteen vol- 
umes, are his amazingly rich contribution. 
Hegel's Logic is a search for the eternal 
forms of Reason. His Philosophy of Na- 
ture is an attempt to trace these abiding 
forms as in eternal process of manifesta- 
tion in the eternally vanishing forms and 
phases of the outer world. His Philo- 
sophy of Mind indicates the way by which 
the human soul *' struggles upward out of 
nature into spirituality.""^ 

In the Hegelian system of Philosophy, 
then, there is presented a reasoned, articu- 
lated account of the total organic round 
of Evolution, f The Logic culminates in 
a glimpse of the Eternal Mind, whose ab- 
solute Internality is focused in God. In 
the Philosophy of Nature this same ab- 
solute, divine Internality is seen unfolding 
its creative energy into the form of that 
infinite Externality which we call Nature. 

* Werke, X2., 120. 

f It is Hegel, and not Darwin, nor yet Herbert 
Spencer who is the real author of the modern doc- 
trine of evolution. 



General Educational View. 37 

In the Philosophy of Mind we see the same 
infinite creative Energy again gathering 
itself into foci, constituting human souls — 
units characterized by the same absolute 
Internality as that which constitutes the 
central, vital element of the Eternal crea- 
tive Energy or Mind itself. 

Nature is the outer form of the divine 
Thought, and apart from that Thought it 
is nothing. The return of this Thought to 
its own native Internality in the form of 
a self-conscious unit is the process of the 
creation of a human soul. Man is madei 
in the image and likeness of Divinity, for \ 
he is Divinity awaking out of the sleep of 
infinitely self-expanded being. And as the 
expansion is infinite, so the concentration 
of Return is infinite, assuring to the indi- 
vidual soul an infinite destiny, consisting 
of endless progress in self-realization, one 
essential phase of which must be an ever- 
deepening consciousness of its own God- 
likeness. If nature is God's omnipresence, 
in the sense of his infinitely diffused being, 
the human soul is God's omnipresence, in 



38 Hegel's Ediicatio)ial Ideas. 

the sense of his infinitely concentered 
being. 

To aid the individual soul in fulfilling 
this destiny — to aid it in freeing itself from 
its own capricious tendencies, and in con- 
forming to the divine Type or Ideal Na- 
ture common to all spiritual beings — such 
is the central aim of all true educational 
effort. Indeed, Hegel expressly says :"" 
'' With the school begins the life of uni- 
versal regulation, according to a rule ap- 
plicable to all alike. For the individual 
spirit or mind must be brought to the put- 
ting away of its own peculiarities, must be 
brought to the knowing and willing of 
what is universal, must be brought to the 
acceptance of that general culture which 
is immediately at hand " — at hand, that is, 
in the organized social life around him. 

Evidently, then, in the Hegelian view, 
man is in truth the inicrocosin,\ and it is in 

^Werke, VI 1 2., 82. 

fit is to be wished, in this connection, that every 
thoughtful teacher might be induced to read Lotze's 
great work, the Microcostmis. It has been translated 
by Elizabeth Hamilton and E. E. Constance Jones. 



General Educational View. 39 

this manner that we are henceforth to re- 
gard him. He is the Cosmos in miniature. 
As such he is in vital relation alike to Na- 
ture, to Society, and to God. And because 
of these phases of relationship involved in 
the life of each individual human being, it 
is evident that his education can rightly be 
developed only on condition that in the 
process of his education all these conditions 
determining his life shall betaken into con- 
sideration, and freely allowed full measure 
of efificiency, each in its own specific way. 
But it is also important to keep clearly 
in view the fact that Nature is only the 
infinitely extended outer form of the in- 
finitely concentered inner mind of the Cre- 
ator. As such, Nature is not merely 
something opposed to Mind, it is also and 
especially only one aspect of Mind. It is 
Mind reduced to its lowest terms. And 
the condensation of Nebulae into stars and 
suns, and their attendant spheres, and the 
further gathering of Energy into crystal- 
line forms, and again into microscopic 
spheres, palpitating with the first pre- 



40 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

monitions of individualized life — all this 
constitutes the way of return from infi- 
nitely expanded unconscious being to con- 
centered conscious existence, the highest 
term of which is that self-directed activity 
which specially characterizes Man, and 
proves him to be the actual, endlessly as- 
cending descendant of the primal, eternal 
Mind. It is on this ground that each in- 
dividual human being has infinite and in- 
alienable Rights. "■ Man is by nature ra- 
tional ; therein lies the possibility of 
equality of the rights of all men."* 

But thus all men are identical in nature 
— are of the one self-same divine Type. 
And because the type is divine, and there- 
fore infinite, and because the type can be 
completely fulfilled only in the individual, 
then each individual has an infinite des- 
tiny, and hence a destiny which ultimately 
is one and the same with that of every 
other. The Brotherhood of Man has its 
absolute assurance of unquestionable truth 
in the Fatherhood of God. 

* Werke, VIl2.,65. 



General Educational Viciu. 41 

Hence, each can aid every other, and be 
aided by every other. Humanity consti- 
tutes a divine Family, the ideal of which 
is that each shall work for the good of all, 
and precisely in so doing shall secure to 
himself the greatest good. And as the 
greatest good is continuous and normal 
inner growth, or growth of mind, and as 
it is just this growth which constitutes the 
essence of all true education, it is evident 
that the education of the individual in- 
cludes in the full round of its indispensa- 
ble appliances the whole range of those 
human relations which constitute the or- 
ganic determining substance of the social 
or institutional world. 

Association, then, is a primal law of the 
very nature of Man. As Aristotle insisted, 
'* Man is by nature a social being." And 
to Hegel this truth is of still deeper im- 
port than appears in the form in which it 
presented itself to the great Greek. 

But thus the social factor in the educa- 
tion of Man is of still more vital import- 
ance than is the factor consisting of his 



42 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

relation to Nature. In fact, the realiza- 
tion of man's destiny — the actual develop- 
ment of his education — is impossible, save 
through mutual helpfulness. Hence, all 
the forms of social life, all human insti- 
tutions, have each its specific educational 
value. And when we remind ourselves 
that education is but the process of un- 
folding the divine Type into realized form 
in the individual human being, and that 
that Type has for its central characteristic 
self-activity or Freedom, we can see how 
all-comprehending is the statement of He- 
gel, that *' History is nothing else than 
progress in the consciousness of Free- 
dom,"* and why Rosenkranz should say 
explicitly that '' Hegel represents History 
as the education of Man through God."f 

And further, since Freedom or Self-ac- 
tivity is the supreme quality in and through 
which we recognize the oneness in nature 
of Man with Divinity, it would appear 

* Wcrke, IX., 24 {Philosophy of History, Bohn lib. 
Trans. Sibree, p. 19.) 
\ Hegel s Leben, p. 9. 



General Educational View. 43 

that the consciousness of Freedom cannot 
be rightly unfolded save in so far as the 
educational processes intended to secure 
this result include explicit and systematic 
reference to the fundamental relation sus- 
tained by man to God. 

Thus the education of the individual 
human being can be really complete in 
any given degree only by being at once 
physical, social and religious. 



44 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

IV. 

*' FROM THE SIMPLE TO THE COMPLEX." 

The first word in the most thoroughly 
orthodox articles of modern educational 
faith is this of the necessary law of ad- 
vance " from the simple to the complex." 
It will be worth our while to see what in- 
terpretation Hegel's philosophic theory 
suggests for this assumed law. 

Even so meagre an intimation as that 
already given will serve to show how abso- 
lutely the three-fold idea of Unity in Sub- 
stance, Completeness of Energy, and Con- 
sistency of Process dominates in Hegel's 
view of the world. And this again is only 
a deepening of Aristotle's conception of 
Cause as {a) Material Cause (Substance), 
{b) Formal Cause (Self-defining Energy) 
and {c) Efficient Cause (actual concrete 
Process). And further; Cause cannot be 
real, save as the completly fused unity of 
these three aspects. And being this it is 



''From the Simple to the Co)?ip/ex." 45 

also Final Cause — that is, the perfect and 
perpetual fulfilment of the absolute de- 
mands of Reason. 

Herein, too, is the one thoroughly ad- 
equate ground of the doctrine of Evolu- 
tion. Self-active Energy or Mind appears 
as the primal, self-differentiating Sub- 
stance. Such primal Mind cannot be con- 
ceived save {a) as Energy or Will ; {b) as 
self - directing Energy or Intelligence ; 
{c) as self-sufficing Intelligence or Sub- 
stance ; {d) as self-satisfying Energy, or 
absolute repose in absolute activity. To 
which we must add that absolute activity 
cannot have less than absolute result. A 
perfect Creator necessarily implies a per- 
fect Creation — and vice versa. 

The infinite exercise or forth-putting of 
this Energy is in the first place the crea- 
tion of the extended or material world. 
But this infinite forth-putting or self-ex- 
pansion of the primal Energy is at the 
same time its infinite self-concentration or 
coming together with itself. As infinite 
Energy its act is infinite. Looked at 



4-6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

from one side the result of this act must 
be infinite self-differentiation, or infinite 
self-analysis. But this is only one aspect 
of the process, the complementary aspect 
of which can be nothing less than infinite 
self-integration or self-synthesis. 

In fact we cannot guard ourselves too 
carefully against supposing that differenti- 
ation and integration are ever found or 
findable in actual separation. In the heart- 
beat of the Universe systole and diastole 
are coincident. Both the outflow into the 
form of the extended world of Matter and 
the inflow into the non-extended world of 
Mind are incessant, and the *' heart- 
period " is the eternal Now of divine Per- 
fection. 

But also either aspect of the process 
looked at separately — i. e., abstractly — pre- 
sents a definite order of succession ; and 
thus gives rise to time, which is but the 
form of succession. As we come to com- 
prehend the process and recognize it as 
working toward a definite end we call it 
'' history" or ''evolution," and proceed to 



"Fro7n the Simple to the Complex." 47 

record our observations of and reflections 
upon the process. 

The records thus far made constitute 
what is called " Science " — the cumula- \ 
tive results of the knowing process of hu- 
manity. Geometry, Astronomy, Physics, 
Chemistry — these are the divisions of the 
one total " Universal History " within that 
elementary stage which has to do with the 
forms and processes of the outer material 
world as such. At the same time Chemis- 
try involves " organic compounds," and 
thus introduces us to the secondary stage 
of our *' Universal History " which leads 
through Biology to Human Physiology; 
and this in turn proves to be the transition 
form in which we are already introduced 
to the final or Human stage. 

And all this is not merely important, it 
is altogether essential to the right under- 
standing of the end, the means and the 
method of education. If man would com- 
prehend his actual destiny, and the true 
mode of fulfilling that destiny, he must 
know what he is in his own essential na- 



48 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

ture. And this he can rightly know only 
through discovering the way in which he 
has come to be what he is. Man studies 

I Nature only because he sees himself re- 
flected in Nature. He seeks to know the 
World only because from the dawn of his 
existence he has been prompted by the in- 
extinguishable premonition that the world 
is only his own larger self. The '' Know 
Thyself" of the Delphic Apollo is no out- 
wardly given command. " It is nothing 

I else than the inborn, absolute Law of 
Mind. All activity of Mind is, therefore, 
only a seizure of one's own self ; and the 
end of all true science is only this : that the 
spirit of man shall recognize itself in all 
things, whether in the Heavens or upon 
the Earth."^ 

First of all, indeed, education consists in a 
^ theoretical process — viz: the process of dis- 
covery that the World is a world of Reason. 
But it is also, and equally, the practical pro- 
cess of progressive self-adjustment to that 
World. And this self-adjustment, let us 
* Hegel's Werkc, VII2., 4. 



''From the Simple to the Complex.'' 49 

repeat, has a three-fold significance. It is 
the process of self-adaptation {a) to Natjire 
as the necessary condition of man's phys- 
ical life ; (^) to human Institutions as the 
necessary condition of realizing man's eth- 
ical life ; and {c) to the Eternal Mind as 
the primal condition of the whole life of 
man, and especially of his religious life. 

Evidently, then, in Hegel's view, the 
process from the simple to the complex is 
meaningless, save as the complement of 
the process from the complex to the sim- 
ple. Accepting which it is easy to see 
that in educational discussions the phrase, 
'' from the simple to the complex " is only 
too often used in merely one-sided fash- 
ion, and thus, at best, with only superficial 
meaning. 

Meanwhile the educator, as such, is un- 
der absolute obligation to know the ulti- 
mate, infinitely complex typical nature to 
the realization of which, by virtue of his 
ofifice, he pledges himself to guide the 
child. It is, in fact, only in comparison 
with this ultimate, infinitely complex typi- 
4 



50 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

cal nature that he can hope to judge cor- 
rectly of " simphcity " in all, or even in 
any, of its endlessly varying degrees, 
whether in ends, or in means, or in methods, 
in his work. 

In this connection we may quote He- 
gel's express declaration that •* The con- 
sideration of mind is only then, in truth, 
philosophical or rational, when it recog- 
nizes the idea or notion {Bcgriff) of the 
same in its living development and actual- 
ization ; in other words, when it compre- 
hends the [human] mind as an image of 
the eternal Idea [or divine Mind]."* And 
it is further worth our while to remind 
ourselves that Hegel elsewhere defines 
philosophy as ''the thinking consideration 
of things, "f in which sense every teacher 

* Werke, VI 1 2.. 3. 

f Werke, VI., 4. Of course Hegel uses the word 
thinking {denkende) in its really serious sense of the 
most careful tracing out of relations, and this per- 
sisted in until a reasoned whole is reached. The mere 
idle reflection, so often called thinking, Hegel would 
rather regard as a sort of traiimerei, or aimless, va- 
pory dreaming. 



''From the Simple to the Complex." 51 

ought assuredly to be an ever-growing 
^' philosopher," And the more thought- 
fully the interests of education are consid- 
ered, the more unquestionable it appears 
that the formula, " from the simple to the 
complex," only suggests an infinite pro- 
gressive series, each term of which, from 
one point of view, may and must be re- 
garded as '' simple," and from the oppo- , 
site point of view, must equally be looked 
upon as '' complex." And this complexity 
of simplicity and sirjiplicity of complexity 
must be kept constantly in view by every 
teacher who would prove himself worthy 
of his high calling. For only on this con- 
dition can he judge rightly of the adapta- 
tion of means to ends, and of the relative 
values of ends in his work. 

And now let us note the significance of 
this evolutional clew with reference to the 
development of each individual mind. 



52 Head's Educational Ideas. 



V. 

''THE AGES OF MAN." 

With Hegel the existence of the race 
is presupposed in the existence of the in- 
dividual Man, just as the existence of Na- 
ture is presupposed in the existence of the 
race, as again the existence of God is pre- 
supposed in all, as the primal cause of all. 
Not only is it true that man inherits his 
spiritual nature from Divinity ; he also 
derives \\\s physical nature, his organism, 
wot from the material world, but through 
the material world, from God ; always re- 
membering that the material world itself 
is nothing else than a mode of the divine 
Energy. In the fact that man possesses 
an outward form as the expression of his 
inward being, he is rightly said to be made 
in the image of God, whose outer being 
fills infinite space. And in the fact that, 
as man, his inner being is mind, he is made 



" The Ages of Man:' 53 

in the likeness of God, whose inner being 
is also Mind. God is perfect Mind. Man 
is Mind strugghng toward perfection. 

Nature is thus the outward form of the 
Revelation of Divinity to Man, as Man 
himself is the inner form of that revela- 
tion. So that Nature proves to be of 
two-fold significance in education. On 
the one hand it is of significance for the 
reason that it constitutes the immediate 
determining condition of the outer physi- 
cal life of Man. It is this that constitutes 
the so-called practical import of Nature. 
On the other hand, the manifold aspects 
of Reason involved in Nature, and con- 
stituting the simpler modes of the eternal 
Mind, have always appealed to the deeper 
reason of Man ; and, accordingly, the in- 
terpretation of Nature in terms of Mind 
has from the beginning been one of the 
most significant of all the factors in the 
gradual education of the race. The be- 
ginnings of this interpretation were made 
through the phantasy in the form of myth ; 
the revised and matured forms are un- 



54 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

folded through reflection and speculative 
reason, and constitute what is called sci- 
ence. 

In respect of this two-fold significance 
of Nature, few treatises can be found 
equal to Hegel's AiitJiropology'^ in direct, 
and in the deeper sense, practical sugges- 
tiveness, for the teacher. Not only does 
he show there in terse form and with fairly 
unerring precision the great, fundamental 
determining influences due to distribution 
of land and water, and to the conforma- 
tion of the land, and how these have pre- 
determined the destinies of primitive races 
and nations ; but with a marvelous keen- 
ness of vision which nothing seemed to es- 
cape, he indicates the progress made by 
men of different races in the power to read 
aright the Sybiline books of nature. f 

Here, as elsewhere, it will be impossible 
to enter much into details. We can only 
note that the clew to the explanation and 

* Werke, VII2., 46-249. 

f This latter phase is developed more extendedly 
in the Philosophie der Religion. 



" The Ages of Man." 55 

correction of superstition in all its forms 
is indicated, following which clew one can 
trace the stages through which mankind 
have advanced fromi the various forms of 
superstitious interpretation of Nature to a 
right understanding and more or less ade- 
quate comprehension of its various aspects 
— i. e., from the mythical to the scientific 
view. 

So long and so far as the things of the 
outer world were impenetrable to his vis- 
ion, man bowed in fear before them. As 
nature became transparent to his view, he 
beheld God the Spirit as its substance and 
soul ; and his worship became a worship 
of joy and love. The breath of God's 
spirit is the creation of Worlds ; the breath 
of the spirit of man is the creation of 
words ; as man saw and understood the 
coming and going of worlds, his own 
breath came and went with quickened in- 
tensity and firmer coherence, and his soul 
breathed thoughts and his thoughts con- 
densed into words and the words blended 
into song. It is such rythmic outbreathing 



56 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

of the soul that constitutes Literature and 
Art of every form and every degree. 

The lower animals have voices also ; 
but the symbolism of the voice, as also that 

\ of color, all this belongs to mind articu- 
late^ and this exists for man alone. And 
the spontaneous symbolizing process in- 
volved in sensuous perception on the part 
of man, constitutes the intellectual root of 
that wonder, with which, as already no- 
ticed, all human knowing begins, and 
which, therefore, all real success in educa- 
tion necessarily implies. 

Evidently, then, it is the business of the 

I teacher, not to suppress curiosity or won- 
der — that is, interest — nor yet merely to 
indulge it, but rather to guide it and di- 
rect it upon worthy objects. And in or- 
der to do this, the teacher must know the 
limitations of the child. And to really 
knoiv these limitations, he must know them 
first of all with reference to the universal 
Type of Mind, and also as being absolute- 
ly protean in character. So far from be- 
ing fixed once for all, they are infinitely 



" The Ages of Maji" 57 

variable, to-day vanishing and to-morrow 
reappearing in other and subtler forms. 
The task which yesterday taxed his strength 
to the utmost, so that the sense of contra- 
diction between what was demanded and 
what could be accomplished amounted to 
nothing less than poignant suffering, is to- 
day performed with exuberance and even 
with scorn that any one should count it 
difficult. The problem with which he 
struggles desparingly to-day he will play 
with to-morrow, and smile a rainbow of 
triumph through the vapor of vanishing 
tears. The ''impossible" means only the 
" deferred." 

Endlessly elusive as all this must ever 
be for the teacher, there must nevertheless 
be no illusion in his mind concerning the 
nature of what, in any given instance, con- 
stitutes the actual difficulty in which the 
individual child-mind is involved. Rather 
it is for the teacher to know the whole 
process through which the child must 
pass — to knov^' that process in its general 
character, and to know it also in its de- 



58 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

tails and so be able to render real service 
to the child at every crisis in his progress. 

Thus education, as Hegel explicitly de- 
scribes it, is essentially a process of " me- 
diation,"^ of the reconciliation of what at 
first appear as opposing or even contradic- 
tory elements in the child's mind ; and 
thus, at every step, it is the process of 
raising the consciousness of the child to a 
higher power, to a richer, more positive 
unity. Whence we may note the neces- 
sary inference that the office of the teach- 
er is essentially mediatorial. If the priest 
is ex officio a teacher, so also the teacher 
is ex officio a priest. And it is high time 
that this fundamental character of the 
function of the teacher were better under- 
stood and appreciated. 

But this brings us to notice, in the next 
place, that the first (and least concrete) 
specific formula of the evolutional process 
through which the child must pass — mainly 
under the guidance of the teacher— in its 
attainment of maturity, is that of the so- 
* ^t-ry^^, VI.,135. 



" The Ages of Man.'' 59 

called '' ages of man ; " that is, the several 
periods of childhood, youth, maturity and 
old age in the life of the individual. In 
which connection it is extremely interest- 
ing to see how Hegel traces the forms and 
relations of the inorganic world over into 
the realm of the organic ; and how again 
he shows the relation between the individ- 
ual and the species within the limits of the 
simple sphere of the organic — the individ- 
ual organism completing serially the round 
of characteristics pertaining to the species 
only to die at length and thus to leave the 
species as a mere abstraction. But also, 
in its failure ever to express at one and 
the same moment within itself more than 
a single phase of the significance of the 
species of which it is the '' realization," the 
individual is itself also fated never to es- 
cape wholly from the ghostly realm of ab- 
straction. The individual never wholly 
includes the species, nor does the species 
ever wholly include the individual. Each 
excludes even while it includes the other. 
Such the contradictory character of the 



6o Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

merely organic world. On the other hand 
it is in the realm of mind, properly speak- 
ing, that the species finds itself fully real- 
ized. For in this realm the individual, 
through self-consciousness, comes to in- 
clude the species in itself ; and thus death 
is subordinated to life in the individual 
and hence proves to be only the form of 
transition to a more adequate degree of 
individual existence. 

But here, also, the initial point of viciv is 
simply" anthropological ; " that is, it takes 
account of man chiefly as a *' natural " be- 
ing, or as a mere product of nature. Thus 
regarded, he is subject to natural changes, 
and therefore still falls within the limits of 
Time as the form of change. Hence arises 
a series of distinct states through which 
the individual as such passes — states which, 
so far from being fixed, prove their fluid 
nature by merging the one into the other ; 
a fact which shows the life of the individ- 
ual to have a wider and subtler signifi- 
cance than pertains to the life of a race or 
of a nation as such. It is this series of 



The Ages of Man.'' 6i 



clearly marked states or conditions that 
constitutes what has already been indicated 
as the course of the *' ages of man." 

Even from the merely anthropological 
point of view, this succession of periods is 
of deep practical interest to the teacher; 
for on the one hand the child is not merely 
a soul, but an embodied soul ; and on the 
other hand the body of the child is not 
merely an animal, but also the organ of a 
developing mind. So that the study of 
man as animal can never be adequately 
pursued, save in so far as it is pursued 
with reference to the mental functions 
which the body, as organ, is fitted to serve. 

In fact, the complete separation of the 
anthropological from the psychological 
and the ethical point of view is quite im- 
possible, and the consideration of the char- 
acteristics of the later are inevitably more 
or less anticipated in the analysis of the 
earlier. For what, in the living or organic 
being as such, constitutes nothing more 
than the simple quality of the species, 
shows itself in the spiritual being as noth- 



62 HegeVs Edticat zonal Ideas. 

ing less than the characteristic of rational- 
ity. 

It is this rationality that constitutes the 
central point of interest even in the initial 
anthropological stage. *' The age of in- 

I fancy is the period of natural harmony, of 
simple contentedness on the part of the 
* subject' [or individual mind] with itself 
and with the world. It is thus the begin- 
ning in which contradiction has not yet 

j arisen ; as the period of old age is the end 
from which opposition has ceased." What- 
ever oppositions appear in infantile life 
are without interest, since they are super- 
ficial and fail to penetrate to the inner be- 
ing of the individual. '' The child lives in 
innocence, without lasting grief, in love 
for his parents and in the feeling of being 
loved by them." And yet the germ is 
here of all that is to follow. 

For this reason '' this immediate, and 
hence non-spiritual, merely natural unity 
of the individual with his species and with 
the world in general must be broken np^ 
The individual must progress to the point 



" The Ages of Man." 63 

of putting himself in direct opposition to 
the actually existing world about him. 
For thus alone can he take the first step in 
the attainment of his own independence. 
It is this that specially characterizes j^?////. 

True, this opposition is altogether one- 
sided, and in turn must also be overcome. 
The individual must recognize that the 
actually existing order of the world is it- 
self the immediate, practically unfolded 
form of Reason, to which he must con- 
form, if he would realize his own indi- 
vidual existence. 

Arrived at this point the youth has 
become a man. 

Old age, finally, is the simple return to a 
state of indifference to affairs, and presents 
no point of positive interest in an educa- 
tional sense. 

{a) But upon this important aspect of the 
subject we must enter a little more into 
detail. 

And here the first thing we have to 
notice is that the age of infancy is charac- 
terized especially as the period of bodily 



64 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

grozvtJi ; and above all, as we may add, of 
the growth of the brain as the more imme- 
diate organ of individualized life. Such 
individualized life begins with breathing — 
that special rhythmic practical relation, 
positive and negative, to the outer world, 
consisting in inspiration and expiration of 
the enveloping medium. Immediately con- 
nected with this is vocalization — a cry, 
which, regulated and articulated, at length 
becomes speech. 

It is worth noting, too, that talking and 
walking begin simultaneously, which serves 
to remind us that the brain is the organ 
of mind as zuill, no less than of mind as 
intelligence. For, as already noticed, man 
stands erect, not because it is ''natural" 
for him to do so, but because he zvills to 
stand. To which we may add that though 
a cry may be "involuntary," the utterance 
of a word is no less a deliberate expression 
of will than is standing or taking a step; just 
as standing and walking are definite forms 
of activity, and hence are expressions of 
intelligence no less than expressions of will. 



" The Ages of Man.'' 65 

But with the beginning of definite, de- 
hberate act and speech the definite formal 
education of the child has begun. The 
c\{\\(\ feels his independence ; is ceaselessly 
surprised and delighted with the discovery 
and exercise of his own powers. Through 
language he learns to apprehend things in 
their universal character, and also attains 
to the consciousness of his own universal- 
ity in the use of the pronoun '' I." 

At the same time the feeling of inde- 
pendence on the part of the child is shown 
in Jianeiling things in play. To which 
Hegel adds that the most rational use 
to which children can put playthings is 
to break them to pieces. And he would 
certainly have emphasized this judgment 
still further had he lived to see the greed 
of the manufacturer invading the sacred 
world of childhood, and, by anticipating 
all the wants of children in respect of the 
means of play, rob them of the inalienable 
right to growth in intelligence and in will 
and in healthful pleasure through the in- 
vention and practical creation of their own 
5 



66 HegeVs Ediicaiioiial Ideas. 

toys. Happily Froebel and an army of 
Froebelians have come to the rescue, and 
children are being trained in the spirit of 
play joyfully to exercise their intelligence 
in invention and their will in creation. 
Happily, too, the normal child can never 
be altogether satisfied with the toy that 
has been given him ready made until he 
has analyzed it, that so at least he may see 
how its synthesis has taken place. 

Thus even infancy reveals a seriousness 
of purpose, and the play of childhood is 
already the premonitional form of the crea- 
tive activity of zvork — of the self-regulated 
exercise of power through which the indi- 
vidual attains maturity. The theoretical 
phase of this is inqiiisitiveness, which is the 
mainspring of intellectual acquisitiveness. 
The awaking, prophetic sense of what he 
ought to be — the stirring of the deepest 
instinct of his being consisting of the 
divine element of Reason in his heredity 
— this involves the disquieting recognition 
that what he is does not conform to what 
he ought to be. And of this the inevit- 



" The Ages of Man." 67 

able outcome is the lively desire to become 
as mature people are, and to this end to 
live in association with them. 

Herein, too, is the secret of the deeply 
significant disposition towards Imitation^ 
which is so like a frenzy in children. 
Hence, too, that eager questioning spirit 
which heeds no bounds, and which so often 
appears as impertinence in the child. 
'This characteristic striving of children 
after self-definition {ErzicJuing) is the in- 
ner moving element in all education 
{Erziehimg).'' 

But the ideal of which the child is con- 
scious and to which he would elevate him- 
self does not appear to him in abstract 
general form. Rather it appears to him, 
as Hegel specifically notes, in the form of 
a given individual person who is to him an 
authority. Only in this concrete fashion 
as embodied in another and relatively ma- 
ture human beinc^ does the child recoe- 
nize that essential being which he still re- 
gards as his own and to realize which in his 
own person constitutes his chief aspiration. 



68 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

This feeling of reverence for author- 
ity — for an example in the concrete of 
what the child himself desires to becom^e — 
ought, Hegel insists, to be preserved and 
fostered with special care. 

According to Hegel, then, it is evident 
that in the theoretical aspect of the child's 
education the teacher is an authority 
whom he must follow, and that in the eth- 
/ ical aspect of his education the teacher is 
a model whom the child must imitate. 
And, indeed, in the nature of the case 
this can scarcely be otherwise, let the ca- 
pability and the character of the teacher 
be what they may — a point upon which 
boards of education may very well reflect 
with even more than ordinary seriousness. 
We may note in the next place that 
with such penetrating view of the signifi- 
cance of child-life Hegel could hardly be 
expected to treat with any great degree of 
consideration the trifling pedagogics 
(Spielcndc Pddagogik) which would strip ed- 
ucational work of all earnestness of pur- 
pose and definiteness of means and con- 



" The Ages of Man.'' 69 

tinuity of method and reduce it to the 
mere aimless form of childish play— which 
would demand of the educator that he let 
himself down to the level of the pupil in- 
stead of elevating the latter to the serious- 
ness of a purpose in itself essential. Such 
mere pass-time "' education " may easily 
result, and in fact could not fail to result, 
in the child coming to regard everything 
in a merely superficial manner and to act 
from mere caprice. 

In this connection we may easily gather 
that much of the so-called child-study of 
the present day could hardly have failed 
to awake the scorn of Hegel, who would 
indeed have the child thoroughly studied 
by the educator ; but studied with explicit 
reference to its essential nature on the one 
hand and to its inevitable limitations on 
the other ; )iot with reference to its ca- 
prices and mere trifling fancies and observa- 
tions — these, too, set down at random and 
altogether indiscriminately by wholly un- 
trained and even immature minds. No 
doubt the peculiarities of the individual 



/O HegeVs EdiicatioJiai Ideas. 

child ought to be noted by the teacher ; 
but only in order that they may be cor- 
rected — not with a view to recording them 
as if they were of profound and universal 
significance ! We ought still to go to 
school to Aristotle if we have not yet 
learned that, as he says, '' there can be no 
science of the accidental." 

On the other hand not less seriously det- 
rimental results may easily follow from a 
different method sometimes followed by 
injudicious teachers. That method con- 
sists in never-ending commendatory incit- 
ing of children to *' reasoning ; " whence 
mere glibness and flippancy is likely to be 
the only result. No doubt the thought of 
the child must be awakened, but the 
teacher ought to remember the limitations 
of the child's mind in this respect, and not 
attempt to present the ultimate values of 
things to the unripe, empty understanding 
of children. 

{b) We have next to observe that just 
as the most conspicuous transition occur- 
ring within the period of childhood is that 



" The Ages of Man.'' 71 

out of infancy into the articulately speak- 
ing std,^^ ; so the transition from childhood 
to youth occurs in and through puberty 
which, in Hegel's phrase, is the life of the 
species rising to consciousness in the indi- 
vidual and beginning to seek satisfaction. 
And of course by the '' species " coming 
into explicit form in the individual con- 
sciousness Hegel here means, not so much 
the animal species as manifested in the 
form of mere physiological tension, as 
species in the sense of what he calls the 
" Substantial Universal ; " that is, species 
in the sense of an internal vital principle 
constituting the essential ideal or type 
struggling, in the form of vague premoni- 
tion, to be realized in and for and by the 
individual himself. 

Thus instead of seeing his ideal already 
realized in the person of a given human 
being of relatively mature age and serving 
as an authority and a model, as happens 
with the child, the youth conceives his 
ideal as something too exalted to have yet 
attained realization, and in comparison 



72 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

with which the things and persons and in- 
stitutions of the actually existing world 
are insignificant and worthy only of com- 
miseration or contempt. Hence, that the 
world of present reality should be regarded 
as itself the form in which the actual evo- 
lution of that Ideal has already taken 
place and is now taking place can only ex- 
cite the scorn of the clear-sighted and im- 
patient youth. On the contrary the pres- 
ent world of fact in its whole range is for 
him a mere perversion and caricature of 
the genuine Ideal. Hence the youth feels 
himself called to revolutionize the world 
and bring it into conformity with the 
Ideal — /. c, his ideal. 

It is thus, as Hegel puts it, that the 
peace in which the child lives with the 
world is broken by the youth. And pre- 
cisely on account of this persistent appeal 
to the Ideal the youth bears the appear- 
ance of having a more exalted aim and a 
greater generosity of soul than has the 
man engrossed in mere transitory inter- 
ests. On the other hand it is for the 



" The Ages of Man.'' 73 

youth to discover that it is precisely the 
man of affairs who in freeing himself from 
his own subjective or merely individual 
fancies and visions of far-off unattainable 
'' Ideals," has merged himself in the con- 
crete Reason of the actual world and has 
come to put forth his energies for that 
world. 

To this self-same end, indeed, the youth 
himself must come at last. Meanwhile his 
immediate aim, in his own estimation, is 
precisely this — to formulate himself, to 
prepare himself for the carrying out of 
the ultimate aim of bringing his splendid 
Ideal into perfect realization. And it is 
precisely in the carrying out of this, his 
ininicdiatc aim, that the youth becomes a 
man, and discovers at last the futility of 
his projects for revolutionizing the world. 

But also this discovery constitutes a se- 
rious crisis in the experience of youth, and 
is likely to assume a more or less tragic 
form. The descent from his ideal life into 
the monotonies of actual communal life is 
apt to appear to him as a hopeless descent 



74 Hegel's Ediicatio7ial Ideas. 

into the inferno of Philistinism. In which 
case the utter irreconcilabihty of the pres- 
ent Reahty with the fondly cherished 
Ideal plunges the youth into a sort of 
hypochondriac state — a state from which 
one of weak nature may prove unable ever 
to recover. 

At this critical period there devolves 
upon parent and teacher the difficult and 
delicate task of bringing the youth to re- 
cognize that the necessity in which he finds 
himself involved — the necessity of enter- 
ing into a world that seems to him an al- 
together alien world — is, after all, by no 
means a necessity of violence, but rather 
that it is nothing else than the necessity of 
Reason ; that, therefore, considered as ex- 
ternal to the life of the individual, it is 
just the Rational and Divine which as such 
possesses the absolute Might to bring 
about its own perfect realization ; and 
that, also, considered as pertaining to the 
individual, it is nothing else than the very 
law of his own inner being demanding 
that precisely for the purpose of his own 



" The Ages of Ma7i" 75 

self-realization — which is but the realiza- 
tion of his tj'uc Ideal — he shall willingly 
and unreservedly take his part in the total 
round of activity of this seemingly foreign 
world ; but which, nevertheless, is a world 
to which he is actually altogether native, 
and in which it is his destiny to be alto- 
gether at home. 

In short, we may say that youth is the 
period of the home-sickness of the soul. 
And the gravity of the disease is in the 
delirium by which the youth fancies that 
his true home is in a far-off cloudland, and 
that he is at present an exile in a world 
which can neither understand him nor 
sympathize with him. 

In this critical period, we repeat, parent 
and teacher are joint physicians. Happy 
the youth whose case his physicians rightly 
understand ! The true remedy is nothing 
else than right education. 

From the study of the child, and of the 
youth, as thus indicated, we may securely 
infer the general character of education, 
and the course it must take, to be wor- 



'j6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

thy the name of education.'^ And first 
we will attempt to show in what educa- 
tion essentially consists. 

* I omit any reference to the age of maturity, 
though this, too, is of importance, as the period of 
prolonged self-culture, and of mutual helpfulness to 
this end in the form of culture-clubs, university ex- 
tension, etc., etc. 



General Amotion of Education . yj 

VI. 

GENERAL NOTION OF EDUCATION. 

We have now to remind ourselves of 
what is in itself a self-evident proposition : 
that the very idea of education presup- 
poses a state of imperfection from which 
the individual is to be raised to a state 
of relative perfection. At the same time 
this self-evident fact has only too gen- 
erally been interpreted as if it were of 
significance solely or mainly in respect of 
the intellectual aspect of human life. 
Whereas, on the other hand, education 
can really — /. e. rationally — mean nothing 
else than the regulated process of matur- 
ing the whole being of the individual. 
And while Hegel steadily and rightly kept 
his eye upon the central idea of education 
as consisting essentially in the process of 
developing into realized form the spiritual » 
and abiding nature of the individual ; yet 
the careful consideration he gives, espe- 



78 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

cially in his Philosophy of History, to the 
influence of cHmatic conditions, to the con- 
figuration of the land-masses, and to the 
proximity to tiie sea, as influencing the 
development of races, of nations, and of 
individuals, shows how well aware he was 
of the significance of the physiological life 
of man — not in itself, but as organic to his 
spiritual lift' — and also how consistent 
with his whole view of education is the 
central idea of the so-called '' New Edu- 
cation " to the effect that the child's own 
activity is the all-important factor involved 
in determining his own development, 
whether considered as physical, as intel- 
lectual, as moral, or as religious. 

How to direct that self-activity is the 
real problem of all education, and Hegel 
could not, without self-contradiction, have 
done otherwise than heartily approve, not 
only of the kindergarten, as putting in 
consistent and effective practical form for 
children his own educational ideas, but he 
must also have recognized in *' manual 
training" means admirably adapted to 



General Notion of Ediicaiioii. 79 

disciplining the will in the critical and 
puzzling period of youth. 

Were there any doubt upon this point 
it must be dissipated by reference to his 
explicit statements as to the deep-reach- 
ing significance of imitation as leading to 
habit, and of habit as the established form 
of character. Indeed, Hegel leaves no 
ground for question that with him the true 
aim of all education is just character ration- 
ally forninlated and practically fulfilled — 
the development of rational habit as a 
transfigured second nature. He does not 
hesitate to expressly declare* that " Ped- 
agogics is the art of making men morale 
And to this he adds that, theoretically, 
" it regards man as natural, and shows the 
way of bringing about his regeneration, 
the way of transforming his first nature 
into a second spiritual nature, so that the 
latter shall attain the form of Jiabit within 
him." 

In accordance with the view thus inti- 
mated, Hegel points out that at the begin- 

* Werke, VIII., 212. 



8o Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

ning of his existence each individual is 
merely rudimentary, merely germinal ; that 
is, wanting in the practical development of 
all the characteristics that go to constitute 
manhood, properly speaking. It is this 
that Hegel expresses when he says that 
man is at first a merely *' natural " being ; 
which amounts to saying that, initially, 
man simply appears as a product of Na- 
ture — as a being whose explicit character- 
istics are essentially animal. 

But this contradicts the ultimate ideal 
or typical nature of man as man, which is 
that of a being characterized by spiritual 
life ; that is, by a life of self-consciousness 
and self-activity. Whence it is evident 
that in each individual there inheres at 
the outset a radical contradiction, which 
contradiction is that between his elemental 
or animal nature on the one hand, and 
his ultimate or spiritual nature on the 
other. In infancy the consciousness of 
the individual is merged in the former. 
Nevertheless, he is predestined to awake 
out of this into consciousness of his spir- 



General Notw7i of Ediccaiion. 



itual nature. And this transition, devel- 
oped into active, transforming degree, 
Hegel regards as just the "second birth " 
of the individual. 

The conception, then, that man is '' by 
nature evil," is true, but true only in re- 
spect of his elemental nature. And even 
this is true only in a restricted sense ; only i 
in so far as this lower " nature " is brought 
into conflict with, instead of being made 
instrumental to, the higher or spiritual 
'' nature," which latter is the ground of all 
possible goodness in him, and to satisfy the 
demands of which the elemental nature 
must be subordinated, or even sacrificed. 

But this, of course, the child does not 
know, and, as a child, cannot comprehend ; 
though, by the divine instinct of his higher 
nature, he has premonitions of it, and 
more or less deep yearnings toward it. 
And further, he must awake to this 
through experience, and must be guided 
to a rigJit awaking by his intellectual 
and m.oral elders. In other words, it is 
only through a slow process of training 
6 



HegeVs Educational Ideas. 



and culture that man first becomes what 
as man he ought to be. Which forcibly 
reminds us of Kant's positive declaration 
in his Pcidagogik,"^ that "• Man can become 
man only through education ;" that in fact 
*' he is nothing else than what education 
makes him." To which he adds, by way 
of emphasis, that, '' Whoever is not cul- 
tivated is crude {ro/i) ; whoever is not dis- 
ciplined is lawless {zuild),'' i. c, has not 
advanced beyond the stage of primitive or 
''savage" life. It is the unenlightened 
and undisciplined yearning toward a larger 
and higher life that, left in such crude and 
rude state, becomes dwarfed, and also per- 
verted into greed of unworthy things, and 
thus prompts the individual to violence 
and evil of every kind. 

It is just these dwarfed and perverted 
yearnings that constitute what Hegel calls 
'' negative or subjective " — i. c, capricious 
and selfish — aims. Hence follows the con- 
clusion that the individual, as a spiritual 
being, '' must bring the two sides of his 
* Werke, Ed. Hartenstein, X., 386. 



Gefteral Not wit of Edticaii07t. 83 

double nature into unison and correspond- 
ence ; " which really means that he must 
wholly subordinate his merely animal or 
'' natural " being to his spiritual or rational 
being ; and this to such extent that the 
latter shall have full mastery over the 
former. 

And to this let us add that Hegel never 
wearies of declaring that " education " is 
the descriptive term applicable to the total 
process by which this complete self-mas- 
tery on the part of the individual is to be 
accomplished. And this, to repeat, al- 
ready implies that education is at once 
both theoretical and practical. On the 
one hand, there is the inner fundamental 
Type, the universal, all-comprehensive 
form or Ideal of Mind inherent in each in- 
dividual mind as mind, to unfold which 
into ever-increasing reality in and for its 
own positive, individual, and personal ex- 
istence is the true destiny of each and 
every mind. On the other hand, so re- 
garded, the individual mind is a '* subject " 
— /. c, a self-conscious, self-active unit of 



84 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

energy — which finds itself in the midst of 
endlessly manifold '' objects " with which 
it is ceaselessly and vitally related by the 
very necessities of its own being. Mind, 
and, above all, a merely rudimental mind, 
cannot exist in mere isolation. But neither 
can things utterly unlike be related. And 
this already suggests that the ultimate 
basis or essential ground of these very 
'* objects " to which the individual finds it- 
self related, must be identical with the Sub- 
stance whose Form is the universal, all- 
comprehending Ideal of Mind. Whence 
it would seem that the Type which is in 
process of unfolding in the individual mind 
is forever unfolded in and through the 
universal, self-active, self-realizing Energy, 
which is the Soul of the Universe, and 
which may thus be named the one per- 
fectly realized and hence eternal Mind. It 
is in this sense that Hegel declares that 
*' even external Nature, like mind, is ration- 
al, is divine, is a forth-putting of the Idea " "^ 
— the word '' Idea " being here used by 

* Werke, VI 1 2., 15. 



General Notion of Education. 85 

Hegel to indicate the eternal Mind in its 
absolutely concrete character. 

Hence, what is germinal in the individ- 
ual mind or " subject " is immanent in the 
things or ''objects" to which such mind 
finds itself related. From which it is evi- 
dent that the education of the individual 
mind must include the progressive devel- 
opment of insight into that universal, all- 
comprehensive Form or Ideal of Mind 
which is at once germinal in each mind 
and also immanent in things. 

And this, which constitutes education in 
its theoretical aspect, manifestly implies 
careful, regulated, ceaseless, and compre- 
hensive study of Mind, on the one hand, 
and of nature, on the other. Not without 
such study can the germinal mind become 
realized as mind. 

But mere theoretical insight, so far from 
being the whole of education, is itself im- 
possible in any adequate sense save as in- 
cluding the practical phase. For while in 
its immediate form it consists in positive 
inner conformity on the part of the indi- 



86 Hegel's Educatiojial Ideas. 

vidual mind to the fundamental law or Type 
germinal in its own being as mind, it has its 
outer, complementary form in progressive 
self-adjustment on the part of the individ- 
ual mind to the actual " objective " world. 

At the same time we must also keep 
clearly in view that to Hegel the '' objective 
world " includes ultimately not merely the 
world of Nature, but also the world of 
human institutions. Though here again 
it must be noted that while Nature as 
such constitutes the immediate '' objec- 
tive " form of the eternal Mind, institu- 
tions are rather the mediate ** objective " 
form of the human mind ; and this not in 
its merely individual, but also and above 
all in its social character. 

And still again, for the individual mind 
the subtlest aspect of the *' objective " 
world consists in the universal forms in 
which man progressively apprehends the 
rhythm of the self-unfolding of the eternal 
Mind. One of these forms is that of 
Beauty. Striving to give utterance to his 
deepest experiences within this sphere, 



General Notion of Education. 87 

man creates the world of Art. A sec- 
ond form is that of Goodness ; and 
man's effort to illustrate what that is to 
him in its highest character unfolds the 
ceremonial forms that breathe the spirit of 
Religion. A third form of this highest 
phase of the objective world is that of 
Truth ; and of this man formulates in lan- 
guage his own interpretation, and to such 
interpretation he gives the name Philoso- 
phy. 

We are now prepared to say that in its 
widest range education begins in the regu- 
lated adjustment of the individual's organ- 
ism to the right sensuous apprehension of 
the world of Nature, and culminates in 
the regulated adjustment of his reason to 
the right apprehension of the eternal Mind 
as immanent in Nature and germinal in 
the individual mind. 

But also the wJloIc mind is germinal in 
each from the first, and hence, in strict 
truth, education can add nothing to the 
mind, but can only stimulate the indivi- 
dual mind to and guide it in its own self- 



HegeVs Educational Ideas. 



activity as the one possible mode of its 
own actual unfolding. 

And now we have to add that so far as 
this process consists in self -definition on 
the part of the pupil, the outer and cor- 
responding process is properly named In- 
struction ; so far as it consists in develop- 
ment of regulated self-activity on the part 
of the pupil, the outer and corresponding 
process is that of Discipline. So far as it 
consists in selfharnionization on the part 
of the pupil, the outer and corresponding 
process is the unfolding of the universal 
forms of Refinement. 

The remaining portion of the present 
essay will be given to indicating what the 
present writer conceives to be Hegel's 
point of view with respect to thes^e several 
essential aspects of education. 



Instruct 10)1 — Its CJiaracter. 



VII. 

INSTRUCTION — ITS CHARACTER. 

And here we must again remind our- 
selves of what with Hegel is a fundamental 
point, namely, that the mind of the child 
as being mind in its merely initial state is 
not yet true as mind. That is, it is only 
the rudiment and abstract prophecy of 
mind. To become " true " as mind it must 
unfold this prophecy into fulfilment, must 
develop this rudiment into the full meas- 
ure of its typical nature, so that its present 
reality shall coincide with its rational Ideal. 
But also because this Ideal is infinite it is 
but inevitable that the present reality of 
the individual mind can never at any 
given moment actually be brought to a 
degree of perfection such that, then and 
there, it will prove to be the adequate ful- 
filment of the ultimate rational Ideal of 
Mind. And the highest //m5£' — not degree 
■ — of excellence attainable by the individual 



go HegeVs Educatiojial Ideas. 

mind is this : That it shall become fully 
conscious of its own ultimate or Typical 
Nature. To go on deepening and enrich- 
ing this phase of consciousness to infinity 
— this is the true destiny of the individual 
mind as a genuinely rational and hence 
immortal soul. And education cannot be 
conceived as ultimately including less than 
the whole of this process ; though, of 
course, we are here directly concerned 
only with so much of this total process as 
takes place during the formative period of 
childhood and youth. 

In this sense, then, education is to be 
looked at objectively as the system of aids 
by which the individual mind is enabled 
to rise from the helplessness of infancy to 
the independence characterizing true self- 
conscious existence. On the other hand, 
from the subjective point of view, it is to 
be regarded as just the process itself 
through which the individual mind ad- 
vances from infancy to maturity as mind. 

Thus Hegel expressly declares that it is 
only when we consider mind in the actual 



Instricction — Its Character. 91 

process of its rational development that 
we can be said to really know mind in its 
truth; adding that by ''truth" he means 
precisely the coincidence between the 
present reality and the rational Ideal. 

Keeping this in view, it is easy to un- 
derstand the further highly characteristic 
and significant statement that '' the whole 
development of mind is nothing else than 
its own self-elevation to its truth ; and the 
so-called powers or faculties of the soul 
have no other meaning than this ; that 
they are merely the stadia of this develop- 
ment. Through this self-differentiation, 
through this self-transformation, and 
through this reference of its specialized 
phases to the unity of its Bcgriff, i.e., the 
unity of its ultimate typical nature — the 
mind is not merely a [theoretically] true 
but also a [practically unfolded and hence] 
living, organic, systematic unit."* But 
again, this universal typical nature (to a 
consciousness of which as his own nature 
the individual attains through education) 

*Werke, VI 1 2., 11. 



92 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

is also just that which constitutes the cen- 
tral characteristic of the species. Hence 
the propriety of Dr. Wm. T. Harris's defi- 
nition of Education as ''the process by 
which the individual man elevates himself 
to the species."^ 

Let us consider this process a little more 
closely. Just here, too, it must be re- 
membered that we are now considering it 
in its intellectual aspect, and thus as tak- 
ing place under those special conditions 
summed up under the name of Instruction. 

We shall first indicate the inner process 
of Instruction. Following this, considera- 
tion will be given to the outward means of 
Instruction ; to which, thirdly, will be 
added a brief consideration of MetJwds of 
Instruction. As to the central aim of ed- 
ucation, it will scarcely be necessary to 
remind the reader that that has already 
been indicated in what precedes. 

*Rosenkranz Pedagogics, p. 31. (Note.) 



histruction — Its Process. 93 

VIII. 

INSTRUCTION — ITS PROCESS. 

The process of Instruction in its most 
general character, may be described as a 
subtle, progressive interaction between two 
minds, one of which, as relatively mature, 
initiates and guides the process, while the 
other as relatively immature, voluntarily 
submits itself to such stimulation and 
guidance. The general psychological pro- 
cess is the same in both minds. But in 
the mind of the teacher the given exer- 
cise has been repeated many times. And 
not only so, but what is presupposed in 
the given exercise, is clearly seen, as also 
is that to which it logically leads. It is 
thus that the assumed relative intellectual 
superiority has been attained and is now 
manifested. 

On the other hand, in the mind of the 
pupil, the process as a consciously pursued 
process, is now for the first time taking 



94 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

place. The pupil is by that fact unable 
to trace for himself with clearness and ad- 
equacy, the rational necessity — z>., the es- 
sential logical relations — of the matter im- 
mediately under consideration. For this 
reason he feels himself to be relatively 
powerless and dependent. Hence all his 
power assumes the form of intent atten- 
tion. And this is as much as to say that 
for the time being he merges all his inter- 
est in the indications given him of what is 
going on in the mind of the teacher. 
Without being aware of it, he becomes an 
intent psychological observer. And the 
direct aim which actuates him in this is to 
develop in his own mind what he discovers 
as taking place in the mind of the teacher. 
That is, he concentrates his whole energy 
in a determined efTort to bring into full 
development on his own part the same 
mode of intellectual activity as that which 
presents itself as already clearly defined 
and realized in the mind of the teacher. 

But this, clearly, is nothing else than 
Imitation — a characteristic which Hegel 



Ijistriicfion — Its Process. 95 

holds, and may very well hold, in high es- 
timation. Especially for the young child, 
as we have already seen, the teacher is re- 
garded by Hegel as both an authority to 
be implicitly obeyed and a model to be 
constantly imitated. It may be said, there- 
fore, that from this point of view the part 
played by the child in the interaction be- 
tween himself and his teacher consists es- 
sentially in this: that in his character of a 
self-active unit of energy, he exerts himself 
to the utmost, that so he may unfold from 
within himself, the aspects of intellectual 
maturity which he recognizes as already 
realized in his model. 

And to this we may add that even the 
transition from this first unquestioning ac- 
ceptance of the model to the critical ques- 
tioning of its validity, is still in essence an 
imitation of the model. The pupil is 
raised to the level of a critic through the 
criticism he has himself undergone. From 
which it is but a natural corollary that the 
character and method of the criticism in- 
dulged in by the pupil will reflect those 



96 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

qualities as exhibited in the criticism of 
the teacher. Here, as elsewhere, Kant's 
remark — trite perhaps in itself — holds 
good ; that '' one generation educates an- 
other." 

But again, from the fact that the teacher 
has already many times traversed the 
course which the pupil must pursue, it is 
open to him to regard that course either 
from the point of view of the result in 
which it culminates, or from the point of 
view of the initial stage with which the 
course sets out. In the former case the 
attitude of mind, as need hardly be said, 
is predominantly analytical, while in the 
latter it is predominantly synthetic. And 
we may add by way of a glance forward, 
that we have here the clew to all true 
vtethod. 

The choice of method — whether analy- 
tical or synthetic — must depend upon a va- 
riety of conditions. But above all, the 
fundamental condition is that of the pres- 
ent degree of advancement on the part of 
those whose education is in progress. 



Instruction — Its Process. 97 

Strictly speaking, indeed, there is no 
such thing as a method that is either ex- 
clusively analytic or exclusively synthetic. 
These are but complementary phases of 
every actual method.^ Meanwhile, ini- 
tially, the individual mind seizes or appre- 
hends everything first of all in its totality. 
Not by any means that for such mind the 
given totality is anything more at the out- 
set than a whole of qualities which as yet 
are undistinguished from one another. 
But just because of this inability to actively 
distinguish between the qualities or char- 
acteristics of a given whole, the undevel- 
oped mind vuist at first seize objects as 
wholes. Whence it is evident that the 
better understanding of such objects is 
possible for such minds, only through a 
process that is primarily that of analysis. 

Nevertheless, this very analysis of the 
*' object " is the process of unfolding into 
richer form within the mind of the pupil, 
just the consciousness of this self-same ob- 

* Compare with this what has already been said 
ow the subject of simplicity and complexity. 
7 



HejeVs Educational Ideas. 



ject. So that while in its objective as- 
pect, the process appears as predominantly 
analytic, yet equally in its subjective phase 
it is no less unquestionably of a predomi- 
nantly synthetic or constructive character. 

And indeed it is precisely this synthetic 
or constructive aspect of the process which 
takes place in the mind of the pupil that 
constitutes the positive, vital factor in all 
education. It is here that, if not the 
most *' interesting," at least the most fruit- 
ful field for child-study presents itself. And 
here too, let us repeat, it is not the mere 
particular limitations constituting the pe- 
culiarities of individual children, the study 
and recording of which is of real signifi- 
cance. On the contrary what is required 
is the study of the limitations of the child- 
mind as such. 

No doubt such study can be actually 
carried on only through observation of 
the minds of individual children. But 
there is infinite difference between the ob- 
servations made by the mere untrained 
curiosity-seeker and those made by the 



Instruct io)i — Its Process. 99 

disciplined psychologist, who will note ab- 
normalities as such, and as something 
merely by the way ; but whose attention 
will be unswervingly directed to the fun- 
damental Ideal of Mind as this is found 
in actual process of development in chil- 
dren ; so that with this fundamental Ideal 
as his guide he may note the positive 
forms under which that Ideal presents it- 
self in childhood, and also discover the 
degree and quality of concrete develop- 
ment it may reasonably be expected to 
assume at any given stage. 

Nor can the teacher too often remind 
himself that all modes of mind are of ne- 
cessity present from the outset in each in- 
dividual mind ; that, as Hegel never 
wearies of repeating in one or another 
form, the whole purpose and plan of edu- 
cation is simply this : To unfold into 
ever-increasingly explicit degree what is 
already implicit in the individual mind 
from the first moment of its existence as 
an individual mind. This and no other is 
the genuine Ariadne-thread that will guide 



100 Heget^s Educational Ideas. 

the teacher securely through all the laby- 
rinthine perplexities of course of study, 
of text-books and of methods. 

And indeed the education of the race 
has not progressed so far without substan- 
tial investigation of the limitations of the 
child-mind being actually made. In truth, 
these limitations in their essential practical 
significance are not so subtle and hidden 
as to render their discovery specially dif- 
ficult. They have been known substan- 
tially for many centuries and the choice 
of means and methods has been deter- 
mined accordingly. Mistakes have been 
made ; " scientific " fads as well as caste 
interests have from time to time drawn 
attention more or less widely from the 
central aim of education ; but in the main 
the process of education has always been 
substantially one and self-consistent, be- 
cause on the one hand the fundamental 
nature of mind is invariable, and because 
on the other hand the limitations of the 
child-mind are so far beyond the reach of 
individual control that wherever educa- 



htstruction — Its Process. 



tion takes place at all it must be along the 
lines already fixed in the very nature of 
the case. 

On the intellectual side these limitations 
are substantially as follows : 

{a) Even in respect of Perception it is, 
or ought to be, a matter of daily observa- 
tion on the part of every thoughtful teacher 
that the av^erage child-mind is able to 
form only very inadequate and for the 
most part very inaccurate images of ob- 
jects. Upon which point we must content 
ourselves with simply calling attention to 
the fact that children's descriptions of 
what they have seen prove that what they 
saw was far enough from corresponding to 
what was there to be seen. And this is 
still further complicated by another fact, 
as follows : 

[b) The Imagination of children is still 
so plastic that the images formed in their 
minds yield to the pressure of feeling — 
whether of fear or of desire, whether of 
disappointment or of elation — so that the 
image often becomes completely trans- 



Hegel's Educational Ideas. 



formed. And not infrequently this occurs 
without the child being in the least aware 
of the fact that any such change has act- 
ually taken place in his mind. He will 
therefore tell, with perfect assurance and 
in wholly good faith, of things to which he 
has been eye-witness, though his elders 
know that what he says represents what is 
'' simply impossible." The reader will 
doubtless recall Oliver Wendell Holmes' 
humorous-pathetic account of his own expe- 
rience as a child in this respect. And the 
case becomes further complicated by the 
fact that the crude images already existing 
in the child's imagination tend to fuse 
with and thus more or less to confuse the 
image in process of formation in any given 
act of perception — this result being the 
more pronounced in proportion as excite- 
ment is involved. 

From which, as we may remark by the 
way, it is evident that what are called 
*' children's lies " are often no more than 
the crude phantasies of children, and that 
irreparable moral injury is done the child 



Instruction— Its Process. 103 

by those who, ignorant of his psycholog- 
ical hmitations and difficulties, assume all 
inaccuracies of statement on his part to be 
evidences of moral perversity and apply 
punishment where the true remedy is care- 
ful, kindly explanation leading to closer 
observation by the child. 

{c) And besides these limitations there 
is the still subtler one in respect of thought 
and language. We are so much in the 
habit of saying that perception develops 
first, imagination later, and thought last, 
that one is liable to accept this formula as 
literally representing the fact, and thus to 
forget that all three modes of intelligence 
are present from the first and develop, not 
merely simultaneously, but also in com- 
plete interfusion ; the appearance of serial 
order being due to the relative complexity 
of these modes ; so that thought is— not 
last to develop — but last to attain maturity 
of development. 

Meanwhile, as a moment's reflection 
proves, the assumption so commonly made 
that the senses are completely developed 



I04 HeT-el's Educational Ideas. 

by the time the child enters school is 
clearly in utter contradiction of the fact. 
The senses, especially those of sight and 
hearing as the specifically intellectual 
senses, ought therefore to receive careful 
education and training, including, of 
course, the testing of the sense-organs. 

But the still more vital point in respect 
of education is this : That sensation and 
perception are to be definitely and delib- 
erately brought into subordination to 
thought, and thus elevated to the rank of a 
fundamental factor in all true observation. 
It is here, indeed, that the significance of 
sense-perception finds its highest term. 
The end and aim of education is, let us 
repeat, to bring the mind to maturity — to 
maturity, we may now add, as one whole 
mind in each and all its modes. It is pe- 
culiarly important in the educational sense, 
however, to bring to as high a state of ma- 
turity — /. r., of clearness and precision and 
adequacy — as possible, the power of per- 
ceiving color and form and relative size ; 
as well as the power of perceiving tone in 



Instruction — Its Process. 105 

its three phases of pitch, loudness and 
quahty. 

The justification of this last statement 
is in brief as follows : 

(i) Judgment — in fact thought in gen- 
eral — is involved in the very process of 
perception ; (2) Visual perceptions are in- 
dispensable to all scientific work, espec- 
ially in respect of measurement and class- 
ification ; (3) precise perceptions through 
the sense of hearing are indispensable to 
exactness both in the utterance and in the 
understanding of spoken language ; (4) to 
which we must add that exactness in per- 
ception of form through the sense of vision 
is indispensable to precision of expression 
and to precision of understanding in re- 
spect of written language. 

Similiarly the imagination must be 
trained into full subordination to thought. 
In which connection teachers would do 
well to read Tyndall's very suggestive es- 
say on "The Scientific Uses of the Imag- 
ination." Though also every teacher 
ought always to distinguish with perfect 



lo6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

clearness, and as rapidly as possible to 
bring his pupils as they advance in grade, 
to distinguish (with greater clearness and 
exactness than was done by Tyndall) as 
between thinking and imagining. Each is 
involved in the other, but neither is the 
other. To imagine is to develop an im- 
age in the mind. To think is to recog- 
nize a relation. One may think space as 
infinite, though he could never imagine it. 
One may imagine a dragon of the sky, 
though he could never really think it. 

On the other hand, as already indicated, 
Hegel would here remind us, and does 
betimes forcibly remind us, that such dis- 
tinctions as that between imagining and 
thinking — to develop which distinction is 
itself an example of deliberate and some- 
what complex thinking — ought not to be 
expected of pupils who are still ** chil- 
dren." Rather this has its explicit begin- 
ning in the period of yoiitJi when the in- 
dividual mind is already more or less def- 
initely awakened to that stage of con- 
sciousness which, as we have previously 



Instruction — Its Process. 107 

noticed, Hegel described as '' including the 
life of the species " — the period namely, 
in which the individual begins positively 
to recognize abstract universal forms, i.e., 
begins really to thmk, and also to unfold 
universal, ideal images, i.e., to exercise the 
higher degrees of creative imagination. 

In fact the particular instance just re- 
ferred to is a good example of Instruction 
that pertains rather to secondary than to 
primary education. 

To which we may add, that since the 
progress of the child is continuous as well 
as gradual, the gradations in the progress 
are practically beyond number. To note 
these gradations and to be able with ease 
to modify the '' instruction " accordingly, 
this is the proof of genuine power of divin- 
ation on the part of the teacher. It is a 
secret which no *' normal " school can com- 
municate. It can only be grown into — 
more rapidly by some, less rapidly by 
others. It is the subtlest element in the 
'' personality " of the teacher. The indis- 
pensable conditions of its development 



io8 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

are : Sincerity of purpose, rich and ever- 
increasingly varied culture, sympathetic 
enthusiasm in school-room work. 

Nor must we turn from this topic with- 
out specially noting the intellectual value 
of the energy of will as expressed in con- 
scious effort to work out a definitely ap- 
prehended plan. Not only does knowl- 
edge lead to self-activity ; knowledge is 
gained through self-activity. Ultimately, 
indeed, no knowledge whatever can be 
gained in any other way. For knowing 
is itself a form of self-activity. But what 
especially is intended here is that the very 
hands are of extremely subtle significance 
as organs of intelligence, which yet must 
be brought into use by the intelligent will 
or the willing intelligence exercised not 
merely directly through the hands them- 
selves, but also indirectly upon the hands 
through the eye. 

It is this, as need hardly be remarked, 
that constitutes the justification, on the 
intellectual side, of that aspect of the 
'* new education " represented by the kin- 



Instruction — Its Process. 109 

dergarten, and the manual training school, 
as well as by the growing demand for ac- 
tual performance of experiments and the 
direct examination of specimens by the 
individual pupils. 

But we must turn to the consideration 
of the second phase of Instruction. 



no HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

IX. 

INSTRUCTION— ITS MEANS— A. LANGUAGE. 

As to the means of Instruction in gen- 
eral, these may be said to consist of sub- 
ject-matter properly arranged (course of 
study) and of the appliances for rendering 
this effective (text-book and apparatus). 
It is the former alone, that we shall here 
especially consider. 

Under this head the first thing to notice 
is that such subject matter really consti- 
tutes just the immediate objective aspect 
of Education. As such it presents three 
distinct phases. The_^;'^/ of these phases 
is Language as expressive of Thought-re- 
lations. The second phase is that of Form 
as expressing Space-relations. The third is 
Proeess as expressing relations of Energy. 
Of course these are by no means mutu- 
ally exclusive '^nh']Q.Q.\.-niatters of Educa- 
tion, but only distinguishable phases of 
the one total subject-;;/^//^;' which is to be 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Language, iii 

made the object of study in the one 
whole educational process. 

These phases we have next to consider 
a little more in detail. 

{a). Language Universal. Language is the 
most universal and adequate form in which 
the thought-aspect of consciousness finds 
expression. We have already noticed in 
this connection that Hegel regards the 
beginning of articulate thinking, that is, 
thinking in words, as marking the first 
great epoch in the education of the indi- 
vidual. 

Indeed, when it is remembered that in 
the nature of the case an image as such 
can represent only a particular and isolated 
fact or object ; and that, on the other 
hand, relations, totalities, multiplicities, 
exist in truth only for the thought-aspect 
of consciousness, while thought, properly 
speaking, can unfold into concrete realiza- 
tion only in and through language — when 
this is remembered, it can scarcely be 
questioned that the actual relation be- 
tween thought and language is one and 



112 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

the same with the relation which may 
otherwise be described as that between 
inner substance and outer form, and again 
as that between vital function and its or- 
ganic expression. And this to such de- 
gree that there is really no extravagance 
in Max Miiller's formula: ''No Reason 
without Language — no Language without 
Reason " — a truth which he regards as of 
sufficiently vital significance to justify his 
placing it as the motto on the title pa-ge 
of his Science of Thought — the work in 
which he sums up the results of the studies 
of his whole life in his chosen field of 
Linguistics. 

Nor does this in any way conflict with 
Steinthal's positive statement that " the 
animal thinks without speaking.""^ In- 
deed, Steinthal makes this remark directly 
after quoting with approval the conviction 
expressed by Herbart to the effect that 
silent thinking is for the most part only a 
suppressed speaking ; and this to the ex- 

* Einleitwig in die Psychologie tend Spracfnvissen- 
schaft, 2d Ed., p. 48. 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 113 

tent of involving the whole nervous pro- 
cess controlling the organs of speech, 
though not with such force as to bring 
the muscles into actual movement.* 

Steinthal, in fact, is only insisting that 
articulate thinking is not the zvhole of 
thinking — that thought pervades the whole 
field of consciousness, and that though in 
its rudimentary degree it is inarticulate, 
it is still the mode of mind through which 
the universal aspects of things — types, 
qualities as such, tendencies (including 
consciousness of before and after i.e., 
time) etc., — are apprehended. 

Indeed it is only in so far as thought is 
conceived to be already necessarily in- 
volved in inarticulate, but germinal form, 
even in the rudimental mind, that the ac- 
tual development of explicit, articulate 
thinking as unfolded in actual speech can 
be accounted for at all upon any really 
scientific basis. And this is but to say in 
particular form, that if we are to have a 

* It has even been said , however, that mere silent 
reading can produce hoarseness. 
8 



114 HegeVs Educatio7ial Ideas, 

science of mind, and of Education as the 
process of unfolding mind, it must be upon 
the express presupposition of the absolute 
unity and wholeness of mind in its primal 
nature. That is, mind as Type must be 
conceived as unfolding into realized form 
in individual minds, each of which, from and 
in the first moment of its existence as an 
individual Mind, is already in germ all 
that the type implies, and hence all that 
the individual mind itself ever can be- 
come. In which case it is evident that 
we can never too strongly emphasize in its 
literal significance, the proposition that 
education is just the evolution of mind — 
the process of unfolding into explicit form 
the characteristics which are implicit in each 
mind from its birth as mind. Man inarticu- 
late, as Hegel insists, is not essentially dis- 
tinguishable from other objects of nature. 
It is only as articulately tJ nuking \x\d.w that he 
proves himself to have emerged out of mere 
nature into a sphere distinctively above 
animalhood and to be realized as vian.'^ 

* Cf. Werke, VI 1 2., 24. 



Instruction — Its Meaiis—A. Language. 115 

And now we have to remind ourselves 
that it is precisely in language that the 
universal characteristics of mind find their 
subtlest, most exact and most adequate 
formulation. It is precisely for this rea- 
son that language constitutes not only the 
earliest subject-matter, but also at every 
stage, the predominating medium of edu- 
cation. From the kindergarten on through 
every stage of education, language is not 
only the most direct, it is the one abso- 
lutely indispensable medium. All other 
appliances find their highest values in this : 
that the knowledge of them is raised to 
its highest term through description of 
them in words, through command of them 
rendered exact by explanation of the re- 
lation of part to part in words, through 
appreciation of their uses — such appreci- 
ation becoming really matured only 
through tracing out by means of words 
the actual purposes which such appliances 
are intended to fulfil. 

But not only is this true from the point 
of view of the teacher, who must consider 



ii6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

the appliances appropriate to the work of 
education. It is no less true in the actual 
development of the mind of the individual 
pupil. And because rational education 
consists in the unfolding of the individual 
mind in accordance with the universal 
type of mind, it may well be presumed 
that in the teaching of language, the pro- 
cess is essentially one of leading the in- 
dividual pupil to recognize with ever-in- 
creasing clearness the universal character 
of language, and of thought as embodied 
in language. And this is only so much 
the more evident when we remember that 
it is in and through language that the 
typical or universal characteristics of mind 
find their subtlest, most exact, most ade- 
quate formulation. 

In this respect the special phases which 
are of direct practical interest to teachers 
are : (i) Voice, (2) Reading, (3) Writing, 
and (4) Grammar. 

(i) Of Voice it may be said that the tone 
merely as tone expresses the least differ- 
entiated phase of consciousness. Through 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 117 

tone as such, only feeling becomes explic- 
it. Whatever thought is involved remains 
merely implicit. Properly speaking, the 
human voice gives utterance to what is 
innermost in the individual consciousness. 
According to Hegel's peculiar formula, 
What the individual is, he infuses into his 
voice {was er ist das legt er in seine 
Stimine).^ 

But also — and to this we feel sure Heg. 
el would offer no objection — the comple- 
mentary aspect of this view is, that what- 
ever the tone of voice to which the indi- 
vidual habituates himself, to that com- 
plexion will his inmost being come at last. 
For this habituation is itself essentially 
nothing else than an inner spiritual pro- 
cess. Feeling and tone are but inner and 
outer aspects of the one concrete fact of 
the individual's own spontaneous exis- 
tence. And there is truth even in the 
paradox of the extreme evolutionists, that 
we are pleased because we smile and sing, 
and angry because we frown and mutter. 

* Werkc, VII2., 131. 



HegeVs Educational Ideas. 



Laughter and cursing alike may pass be- 
yond control and grow hysterical. And 
it is not to be forgotten that it is precisely 
through this outer form that the inner 
substance of mind is really to be ap- 
proached and influenced. 

Even here, then, there is a world of prac- 
tical suggestion for the teacher, and that 
charmed word of the Greeks : Moderation, 
ought to be the motto in every school- 
room. Tone is the subtlest gesture of the 
soul. By example, as well as by precept, 
therefore, a normal tone of voice ought to 
be cultivated, all affectations avoided, and 
voice-culture so conducted as to insure 
increased refinement of mind through 
growth in purity and strength along with 
gentleness of tone. 

But long before the child is sent to 
school he has passed beyond the limits of 
that inner existence which utters itself in 
mere inarticulate cries. His thought has 
become explicit to a degree that must as- 
tonish one who has come for the first time 
to think of it deliberately. Indeed, the 



Instruction —Its Me a ns — A . Language. 1 1 9 

extent to which the ordinary child, even 
of three years, has already mastered the 
thought and language of everyday life 
must go far to confirm in every thought- 
ful mind the belief in the original creative 
activity of mind on the one hand, and in 
the subtlety and extent to which the indi- 
vidual mind is already endowed at birth 
through the evolutional process of the race. 

And so much the more significant does 
this transition from the inarticulate to the 
articulate in vocalization appear when we 
reflect that as a spiritual process the trans- 
ition is from the stage of mere general 
consciousness to that of definite sclf-zoxv- 
sciousness — to what Kant called the 
'' transcendental unity of self-conscious- 
ness," and to what Hegel calls the *' inde- 
pendently existing (/)/r sicJi scycndc) unity 
of self-consciousness." 

Language is, in fact, just the explicit 
form {Dascyii) of the self, pure and simple, 
and in which that matured form of self- 
related unity, known as self - conscious- 
ness, enters into positive existence ; and 



I20 Hegel's Educatio7ial Ideas. 

this in such wise that its existence is at 
the same time manifest to another self.* 
For example, in saying *' I " I realize for 
myself my own existence — bring my con- 
sciousness to the focus of explicit sclf- 
consciousness. But in saying *' I " I also 
address myself to another unit, which I 
recognize as self-conscious likewise, and 
capable in turn of recognizing me in the 
same capacity. So that the expression " I " 
is intended by me, indeed, to indicate my 
own individual self, while, in fact, it proves 
applicable to all other selves, is recognized 
by others as having that value, and hence 
proves to be, not a mere individual, but 
rather a universal sign ; that is, a sign ap- 
plicable alike, and without exception, to 
all minds. 

But also, it is a sign which derives its 
universal nature from the fact that it is 
used by a self-conscious being, as a sign 
of a self-conscious being, and is addressed 
to a self-conscious being, and is under- 
stood by each because every such self- 

* Cf. Wcrkc, II.. 370. 



Instruction— Its MciDis — A. IcDiguage. 121 

conscious being possesses a nature univer- 
sal and common to all alike. Language, 
in short, is universal, because it is the im- 
mediate expression of the inward universal 
nature of Mind. 

In learning language, therefore, the 
child is learning the universal form in and 
through which Mind expresses its own 
universal nature. And it is because of 
this subtle significance of language, as ex- 
pressing the self-conscious universality of 
Mind in the form of specific self-definition 
or thought, that Hegel calls it ^^ the ethe- 
rial element, the sensuously supersensu- 
ous, through which the expanding knowl- 
edge of the mind of the child is elevated 
in ever increasing degree above merely 
sensuous and particular forms to universal 
types, principles and relations, to thought 
properly speaking."^ 

We may note, now, that from this point 
of view language can really exist as lan- 
guage only in so far as it is the outer, 
organic form in which thought is actually 

* Wcrke, VI 1 2., 97. 



Hegel's Educational Ideas. 



expressed. Otherwise it is a mere flatus 
vocisy no more than '* sounding brass or a 
tinkhng cymbal." Hence, we may well 
imagine what Hegel would have thought 
of designating language as a mere formal 
study in contrast with, say, physics or chem- 
istry, as a study having a content ! As if 
language could be '' form " at all, save in 
so far as it is the form of thought ! As if 
thought were not the very essence or ''con- 
tent " of every '' study." 

Above all, in respect of elementary in- 
struction in language, form and substance, 
are one and inseparable. For there the 
child is as yet wholly unable to distinguish 
between a " form " and a " content." 
Rather, he can only grasp the two in 
their concrete unity. He can no more 
know language apart from thought than 
he can know thought apart from language. 
For him the description of things is at 
the same time the direct embodiment of 
thought. 

Now, by the time he is sent to school, 
the child has not only taken his first step, 



Ijistruction—Its Means— A. Language. 123 

but has advanced far beyond his first 
step in this process of expHcit, articulate 
thinking. So that the teacher, even of the 
most elementary grade, may and does as- 
sume, with perfectly good reason, that this 
work has already been brought far on the 
way. Of course there are wide differences ; 
but the minimum is still an accomplished 
fact of relatively great extent, and of ab- 
solutely vital import. The child has al- 
ready attained substantial self-conscious- 
ness. He already feels the universal sig- 
nificance of things. He already possesses 
a vocabulary serving the modes of self- 
comprehension, and of communication with 
others, in respect of all ordinary interests. 
Nevertheless, he has developed this vo- 
cabulary spontaneously. True, his spon- 
taneity in this process has developed in re- 
ponse to external stimuli, including the 
spoken language of those with whom he 
has been associated. Hence, from this 
side it may also be said that he has at- 
tained to the stage of articulate utterance 
throu":h imitation. But even so, the imita- 



124 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

tion has been unreflecting, and, in this vital 
sense, spontaneous. 

On entering school, therefore, the child's 
vocabulary consists of words as wholes. 
Nay, to him each sentence is a whole, the 
construction of which is hot even a mys- 
tery to him ; for as yet he has raised no 
question about it, and is not aware that 
any question could be raised. As Stein- 
thal and others have intimated, the child 
comes to speak, much as he comes to see 
and to hear — by the spontaneous exercise 
of a power native to him, through an or- 
gan already formed, and only needing the 
spontaneous inner activity of the mind in 
answer to appropriate outer stimuli to 
bring it into effective use. Or, as Stein- 
thal elsewhere suggests, the child cannot, 
properly speaking, be said to have learned 
language, seeing that no one has actually 
taught him. Rather, " what the gardener 
does with the seed, from which he expects 
to obtain plants, just that we do with our 
children, in order to bring them to speak : 
we bring them into the necessary condi- 



Instruction— Its Means— A. Language. 125 



tions of mental growth, that is, into human 



association.""^ 



Such in brief are the conditions of the 
actual development of the fact of language 
on the part of the individual child. From 
which it will be seen that the first great 
epoch in the development of individual 
self-consciousness, consisting in the spon- 
taneous unfolding of a vocabulary to meet 
the ordinary needs of human association, 
still involves a subtle synthetic process 
and corresponding product, of the nature 
of which the child is still unconscious. 

Of the process, indeed, he must remain 
unconscious until he has attained the de- 
gree of reflective self-consciousness, where 
he can enter upon the investigation of ulti- 
mate questions, including the nature of 
the mind itself. 

Of t\\Q product, he begins the analysis as 
soon as he enters upon school-life, prop- 
erly speaking. And in order to do this, 
he must be brought into direct relation 
with language in a new form. 
*Op. cit. , p. 83. 



126 He^eVs Educational Ideas. 

(2) Reading constitutes this new form, 
and involves the first stage in the analyti- 
cal examination of language as the outer, 
organic form of thought. As we have 
seen, the vocabulary he already possesses 
is the product of the spontaneous synthetic 
activity of the child's own mind. The first 
stage of his reflective activity in school will 
consist normally of the formal analysis of 
the elements of this vocabulary under the 
guidance of the teacher. What took place 
before by instinct is now to find its com- 
plement in regulated — i. c, more or less 
prescribed — reflection. The first step is 
to be taken in the systematic^ reduction 
of the sensuous consciousness to subordi- 
nation to the reflective consciousness. 

On the other hand, this conscious analy- 
sis is only the transition between the un- 
conscious synthesis by which it was pre- 
ceded, and the conscious synthesis by which 
it is immediately followed, and which con- 
stitutes its true complement. 

In its primitive, unanalyzed form lan- 
guage may not only be compared with, it 



Instricction—Its Means — A. Langitage. 127 

may rather be regarded as, an art-work.^ 
With the analysis of the forms thus spon- 
taneously produced, defects are discov- 
ered and corrected, and the work not 
merely restored to its primal unity, but 
also raised to a higher term of perfection, 
both in use and in beauty, for the con- 
sciousness of the child. 

It is the bringing into its full significance 
this restored form of language after its an- 
alysis that in its firstdegree constitutes read- 
ings the proper sense of the term. And 
here, evidently, two aspects present them- 
selves. The one is the inner aspect. This 
consists in the careful endeavor on the part 
of the pupil to reproduce in his own mind 
the exact thought symbolized in the writ- 
ten signs. The other is the outer aspect, 
consisting in the attempt to give proper 
vocal expression to the thought thus in- 
wardly reproduced. Both are in truth 

* Curtius {History of Greece, Trans. Ward, I. 32), 
declares that the first historic deed of the Greeks was 
the development of their language, " and this first 
deed an artistic one." 



128 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

exceedingly subtle processes, requiring a 
high degree of mental cultivation and of 
vocal skill on the part of the teacher. 
And so much the more when the distorted 
forms of speech so often developed by 
children through defective or vicious in- 
tellectual associations are taken into the 
account. Should the teacher also prove 
defective in culture and refinement, the 
case must indeed be hopeless. 

It should be added that the teaching of 
reading presents two aspects correspond- 
ing to those just indicated as involved in 
the process of reading. The first consists 
in showing the child how to study the les- 
son, so as to find out exactly the thought 
it conveys, and along with this, and as a 
means to it, to bring him clearly to recog- 
nize the precise form of the given words 
and sentences. The second consists in 
leading him to find and bring into exer- 
cise the vocalization through which alone 
the thought can be rendered precisely and 
fully comprehensible to the hearer.^ 

* The reader will find in Prof. Hiram Corson's 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 129 

Of SO great importance did the proper 
instruction of the pupil in reading appear 
to Hegel that he expressed the wish and 
the hope that it might be made one of the 
chief means of culture in the schools. 
And, of course, this could be only through 
the careful exercise of reading, in the 
sense of proper vocalization, in direct, 
ceaseless combination with reflection, both 
as to the form of the language and as to 
the thought which the language conv^eys.^ 

(3) But though reading involves so much 
of reflection aud analysis, it still is pre- 
dominantly '' receptive " in character. That 
is, it depends upon an immediate, actual- 
ly given external object — the book to 
be read. And this, of course, necessarily 
implies the complementary constructive 
process through which the book was pro- 
duced. In other words, reading involves 
writing. 

little book on " The Aims of Literary Study," ad- 
mirable suggestions as to right method and true 
values of voice-culture in reading. 
* Thaulow, HegeF s Ansichten, I., 90. 
9 



130 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

Writing is production. Reading is in- 
terpretation and reproduction. For this 
reason, as we may remark by the way, 
reading and writing ought, at the outset, 
to be taught simultaneously and as com- 
plementary phases of the same exercise. 
Spoken word, written word, printed word 
— these are so many forms of one and the 
same concept in the mind. And such gen- 
uine examples of unity in variety and 
variety in unity ought to be made the 
most of. 

Here, too, as elsewhere, neatness and 
precision of form are but the outward 
means through which are developed ex- 
actness and finish of inward power ; and 
it is not so much the visible, passing, 
more or less marketable product as the 
invisible, permanent, priceless mental 
habit that is of chief moment in edu- 
cation. 

Such brief intimation will suffice with 
respect to the elementary and so-called 
formal work of instruction in writing. 
From the first, as the pupil advances 



Instritctio7i — Its Means — A. Latt^iiage. 131 

in power to produce at will the writ- 
ten form of language, it cannot be 
doubted that he should be led to exercise 
that power in giving written as well as oral 
expression to his own thought. By so 
doing he not only gives to his own thought 
visible and more or less lasting objective 
form, but he also becomes accustomed to 
examining it at his leisure in that form, 
and hence, to carefully noting and correct- 
ing its defects. Properly conducted, such 
exercises cannot fail to react upon the 
thinking of the pupil, rendering it more 
exact, concise, and forcible. 

(4) Nevertheless all language-work, as 
thus far indicated, is still relatively sponta- 
neous. Analysis appears, indeed, but only 
as a matter of judgment in the form of 
taste. It is still literally the art of lan- 
guage with which the pupil is occupied ; 
and that precisely this phase of language- 
training may be brought to its highest 
degree of perfection it is indispensable 
that it should be supplemented by the 
science of language. 



132 Hegel's Educational 'Ideas. 

Thus Grammar, as the science of lan- 
guage, constitutes the instrument of rea- 
soned criticism, of judgment in the form 
of reflection. In this connection Hegel de- 
clares that " The value of grammatical 
study cannot be too much emphasized 
since it constitutes the beginning of logical 
culture " — an aspect which, in our day as 
well as in that of Hegel, ''appears to have 
fallen almost wholly into oblivion. In 
fact. Grammar has for its content the cate- 
gories [or universal terms of thought] which 
are the peculiar products and determina- 
tions or characteristic forms of the under- 
standing. In it [/. ^., in Grammar], there- 
fore, the understanding itself begins to be 
learned [or technically exact]. 

" These most spiritual essentialities \inz. 
the categories] with which Grammar first 
makes us acquainted are something spe- 
cially comprehensible to youth, and, in- 
deed, there is nothing of a spiritual [or 
mental] nature more easily comprehensible 
than just these. For the as yet imper- 
fectly developed power of comprehension 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Latiguage. 133 

peculiar to this age is still unable to grasp 
the realm [of thought] in its manifold- 
ness ; while, on the other hand, those 
very abstractions are something altogether 
simple [and hence, easy of comprehen- 
sion]." "^ 

Elsewhere, f in speaking of the logical 
determinations or characteristic forms of 
thought, Hegel expresses himself more di- 
rectly to the effect that " such determina- 
tions are laid down [or presented in definite, 
concrete form] especially in language. 
Hence is it that the instruction in gram- 
mar which is imparted to children has this 
phase of utility : that they are brought to 
attend unawares to the distinctions of 
thought." 

All which may be restated somewhat as 
follows : The mind, in its very nature as 
mind, is a self-centered unit of energy, 
which unfolds itself into consciously real- 
ized form through its relation to its en- 
vironment. In its sensuous modes of ?iZ- 
t\v\ty\tapp?'c /tends particular things. That 

* Loc. cit. f Werke, VI., 50. 



134 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

is, in its responses to external stimuli it 
develops within itself sensuous representa- 
tions of things. But also in its reflective 
modes of activity it comprehends things. 
That is, in the very fact of developing sen- 
suous representations of things, it neces- 
sarily, and with more or less definiteness, 
recognizes these representations as modes 
of its own being, and, in that fact, also 
necessarily seizes them together in vital re- 
lation as modes of its own individual and 
indivisible consciousness.* 

But this process of the comprehension 
of things under the form of the interrela- 
tion of the mind's own modes is just what 
constitutes thinking ; and thinking assumes 
actual outer form in and attains positive 
reality through language and nothing else 
than language. 

Further, by as far as the mind attains 
to .fr //"-consciousness it recognizes the 
modes of its own activity — makes these 

* We will see later on how the psychological prin- 
ciple here indicated becomes manifest in the devel- 
opment of number. 



Instruction — Its Mea7is — A. La7iguage. 135 

the object of its own reflection. And this 
process of the examination of thought by 
thought finds its first positive form in the 
direct apprehension of the simple natural 
categories under which all thought-forms 
are primarily to be classified, and through 
the application of which all thought-pro- 
cesses are to be clarified, corrected, and 
matured. 

It is precisely this process which in its 
elementary form constitutes the essence 
of grammar, and the application of which 
constitutes grammatical analysis. Once 
clearly understood, it appears as self-evi- 
dent that this is one of the most valid and 
valuable of all educational media, and that 
its neglect is one of the gravest educa- 
tional errors of our time. 

So much is especially applicable to ele- 
mentary work. For more advanced pupils 
Hegel is in accord with thoughtful edu- 
cators generally as to the superiority of 
ancient languages over modern, and espe- 
cially over one's mother tongue, for pur- 
poses of intellectual discipline. In the clas- 



He Joel's Educati07ial Ideas. 



sic languages, not only is it that the forms 
are unfamiliar, and hence attract special 
attention, but also every phase of thought 
has its peculiar and appropriate gram- 
matical form. And because it is through 
such concrete forms that the immature 
mind most easily seizes the universal as- 
pects of thought, it is evident that Hegel 
does not exaggerate when he declares that 
the thoroughgoing study of grammatical 
forms presents itself as one of the most 
universal and noblest of all the means of 
cultivating the mind. 

To which we may add that this must be 
true, above all, of that language which 
served to embody the thought of the first 
people in the world who devoted their 
highest genius to art production, on the 
one hand, and to scientific research, on the 
other, and who in just this process devel- 
oped their language to a degree of preci- 
sion and subtlety of expression nowhere 
else equaled, precisely in and through this 
freely creative activity within the realm of 
the Ideal. From which it is but a natural 



Instruct icn — Its Means— A. Language. 137 

corollary that the Greek language is a means 
of mental discipline for which there is no 
adequate substitute ; and the claim that its 
place in the course of study ought to be 
given up to some modern language is based 
upon a total misconception of the educa- 
tional values to be derived from the study 
of language. 

ib) Language of Quantity.'^ Our discus- 
sion of the educational aspects of language 
would be radically incomplete were we 
not to consider the language of abstract 
quantity. What has already been said 
refers entirely to language in its most uni- 

* I cannot pretend that Hegel has anywhere ex- 
plicitly included number under language. But. of 
course, practically, Hegel, along with everybody else, 
does so include it. Even if it be admitted that, as 
President Eliot of Harvard has declared (Regents' 
Bulletin, No. 32. 1895, University of the State of 
New York, p. 955), " the reasoning of mathematics 
is peculiar to itself," yet it is still to be classed as a 
special aspect, and must therefore be regarded as 
realized and to be realized only in some form of 
language. That number is nothing else than a special 
aspect of language in general, has not, as it seems to 
me, been sufficiently appreciated hitherto. 



138 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

versal form. The forms of expression 
peculiar to the reahn of abstract quantity 
may be said to be a dialect of this univer- 
sal language. Hence, all that precedes 
and all that could be said concerning lan- 
guage in the wider sense must be applic- 
able in a measure to the language of quan- 
tity. Some things remain to be said, how- 
ever, concerning the peculiarities of this 
dialectic form. 

And first we may note that Arithmetic, 
which is commonly defined as the science 
of number, might, for that reason, very 
well be described as the elementary gram- 
mar of the special dialect in which the 
numerical aspect of thought finds appro- 
priate expression. And here we are com- 
pelled by the limits of the present essay 
to confine ourselves to the single central 
characteristic of numerical synthesis. 

Students of Kant know that ''74-5=12" 
is one of his examples of a '' synthetic 
judgment a priori ;'' that is, of a judg- 
ment in which (i) the predicate contains 
something not directly given in the sub- 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 139 

ject ; and (2) the truth of which, as soon 
as discovered, is recognized as being uni- 
versal in its appHcation, and also " neces- 
sary " in the sense that from the very 
nature of thought the judgment cannot 
but be accepted as absolutely valid so soon 
as its real meaning is clearly apprehended. 

In referring to this Hegel declares that 
in his doctrine of Synthetic Judgments 
a priori Kant has emphasized a concept 
{Begriff) which belongs to whatever is great 
and undying in his philosophy — '* the con- 
cept, namely, of a distinct aspect or char- 
acteristic which at the same time is insep- 
arable from the given whole ; something 
identical which at the same time is undi- 
vided difference.""^ 

But he adds, directly after, that though 
this concept is present even in perception, 
yet the proposition '* 7 + 5=12," does not 
really serve as an illustration of that con- 
cept. ''Much rather is number a mere 
identity, and numbering or reckoning is 
the producing an identity which is utterly 
* Werke, III., 232. 



I40 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

and wholly an external, superficial synthe- 
sis ; a unity of ones of such nature that, so 
far from being posited, or definitely rep- 
resented as identical with one another, are 
really set forth as external and positively 
separated." 

Kant himself, in fact, notifies the reader 
that the given example has^a certain analy- 
tical look, and that primarily the discovery 
that 1 2 is the sum of 7 and 5 is really arrived 
at by bringing to our aid, say, the five fin- 
gers which are one by one added to the 7. 

The real problem in Kant's example of 
a numerical synthesis, as we may remark 
by the way, is in truth the very old one of 
the possibility of performing any addition 
at all, and hence the problem of the pos- 
sibility of number in general. In The 
Sophist, and especially in The Parmenides, 
Plato treats seriously and at length of the 
problem of ''the one and the many." 
Elsewhere, in a lighter mood, he allows 
Socrates to express himself as always 
wondering why it is that an object here 
and another there should, when brought 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 141 

together, become Hvo^ and whether it is the 
mere juxtaposition of things that is the 
cause of multipHcity ! 

Of course it is impossible within the 
present Hmits to enter into the more ab- 
stract speculative aspect of the subject. 
Besides, for the practical purposes of edu- 
cational work, the more immediate psy- 
chological aspect of the question is of 
greater value. Of this I shall present a 
brief intimation of what seems to me the 
correct view, only premising that Kant's 
doctrine of the '' transcendental Jinity of 
self-consciousness," and Hegel's doctrine 
of the original unity and self-activity of 
mind as such, constitute, when taken to- 
gether, the necessary presupposition of 
all really fruitful psychological research. 

To this presupposition no other psycho- 
logical problem refers us more directly 
than that of number. The very idea of 
self-consciousness necessarily implies the 
unity of the mind. But also such idea is 
possible only through a reference of self 
to self This very reference of self to self, 



142 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

however, is at the same time equally a dis- 
tinguishing of self from self. Self-knowing 
is possible only in so far as the self is made 
the object of knowing. But it is the self alone 
that is capable of knowing. As knowing, 
however, the self is subject. Further, in 
the very fact of applying to itself the 
name " subject " the knowing self has 
transformed itself into an object to which 
at the same time it gives the name subject. 

Thus the subject is its own object, and 
the object is itself the subject by which it is 
known as object. They are one and indivis- 
ible : yet also this one has already disting- 
uished itself as two. And as there is no limit 
to the possibility of such self-distinguishing, 
the mind has thus already entered upon 
that phase of consciousness constituting the 
thought of multiplicity with its infinite pos- 
sibility of number. The ivJiole mind, besides, 
is involved in each of its many phases. Con- 
versely each phase involves the whole mind. 

From this point of view it is evident 
that one and one do not make two or become 
two at all. Rather, in the very nature of 



Instruction — Its Means — A. La7iguage. 143 

the case they are from the beginning nec- 
essarily in such relation to each other that 
they just arc two— a two, however, which 
is only a more complex one. When we 
consider the one as one it appears to us as 
continuous, intensive quantity ; when we 
consider it as multiple it appears to us as 
discrete, extensive quantity. Every " one " 
may be considered as an indefinitely com- 
plex sum of '* fractional parts ; " though 
again each of these parts may be properly re- 
garded as a " one." Similarly, every sum as 
such is equally a '' one," though composed 
of many '* ones." And we are to remem- 
ber also that ** reciprocal quantities" are 
any tivo quantities whose product is unity. 
But thus, evidently, number is just a nec- 
essary aspect of thought, and can be said 
to inhere in things only in so far as things 
are themselves regarded as externalized 
thought. It is not the juxtaposition of things 
in space, but their organic interrelation in 
consciotisncss that constitutes the basis of 
number. When I know things they are by 
that fact proven to be in my thought. And 



144 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

I can know them only in so far as they are 
in my thought. Whence it is evident that 
even the outward formal synthesis of num- 
ber is dependent absolutely upon the inner 
synthesis of mind. Or, to return to Hegel's 
explicit utterance : '' Number is the pure 
thought of the externalization of thought."* 

In short we can know anything of one 
and of many only because the mind it- 
self is a one which in its very nature is 
a self-differentiating one — a one which is 
forever specializing itself into many. 
At the same time the ''many" thus pro- 
duced are nothing else than modes of 
the mind itself — differences unfolded by, 
from and within the mind ; which differ- 
ences, nevertheless, are absolutely in- 
separable from the mind. Nay, each 
mode, as we have already noticed, in- 
volves the whole mind — is just a mode 
of the one whole mind. 

Numbering, to repeat, then, is just one 
phase of thinking ; and number, as out- 
ward form, is nothing else than just the 

* Op. cit., 237. 



histruction — Its Means — A. Language. 145 

special aspect of language expressive of 
this peculiar phase of thinking.^ 

But also this phase of thinking, as we 
must add, is limited to the simple, abstract 
characteristic of quantity. It is a mere 
question of vwi'c or less, and wholly ignores 
all qualitative aspects. In itself, therefore, 
number is altogether one-sided and wholly 
inadequate as an expression of thought in 
general, and all attempts in that direction 
must inevitably fail. Indeed the very 
" exactness " of number is due precisely 
to this inadequacy. It admits no ques- 
tion as to its results only because it omits 
from its processes all " disturbing ele- 
ments " — i. c, all the elements which give 
reality to things. 

We have next to note on the one hand 
that this very simplicity or abstractness of 
number along with its generality explains 

* On referring to Sigvvart {Logic, Trans. Helen 
Dendy, II., 33) I find this statement : " Thus num- 
ber shows itself to be the simple consequence of the 
fundamental functions of thought itself," and "has 
its root in self-consciousness," (p. 34), The whole 
section (266) will well repay careful study. 
10 



146 HegeVs Educatio)ial Ideas. 

why it is so easy of apprehension, and 
why it is so much a matter of course 
to begin the definite work of instruction 
in number at the very outset even of ele- 
mentary education. It is precisely the 
phase of thinking that is most abstract 
and which yet finds its application in im- 
mediately given sensuous forms. Indeed, 
just as the child comes to school already 
considerably advanced in language in its 
more general character, so he brings with 
him a rudimentary numerical vocabulary 
together with actually germinating habits 
of calculation developed through the spon- 
taneous processes of his own mind awak- 
ened to activity through his daily ex- 
perience. 

On the other hand it is important also 
to emphasize a point already indicated, 
and which HegeP shows to have been fa- 
miliar even to the thinkers of antiquity — 
the point, viz., that the very limitations of 
numerical expression renders it hopelessly 
inadequate to the expression of the richer, 
* Op. cit., 238. 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 147 

more concrete phases of thought. The 
vocabulary of number, we repeat, is but 
one aspect of the whole vocabulary of 
thought, and it is no less absurd to assume 
that the former is superior to the latter on 
the ground of its greater *' exactness " 
than it would be to insist that the less 
includes and is superior to the greater 
because it is more easily apprehended.^ 
The very ** exactness" of number is the 
unmistakable mark of its hopeless fin- 
itude. For every actual number is exact 
only in expressing a positive limit ; and 
any actual number can of course be mul- 
tiplied by any other number or by itself on 
ad infinitiini. No number can by any pos- 
sibility be infinite ; and just this thought, 
for example, — a thought which transcends 
number — is not a whit less ** exact" than 
any that can be expressed in actual number. 

* I do not say " comprehended," because to really 
coftiprehend the less one must know it in its relations 
— /. e. , must know the greater also — to know the one 
you must know the many ; to know the many you 
must know the one. 



148 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

We have next to remark that because of 
the extreme simpHcity of its processes, in 
which, as Hegel says, the ''same thing is 
always repeated," in which, as Sigwart 
puts it, '' all consists finally in reducing 
manifold combinations of numbers to 
simple counting " — because of this we are 
bound to admit that, while within its 
sphere the study of number is not only 
valid but also indispensable, yet in point 
of educational value its sphere is very lim- 
ited and its value within this sphere is by 
no means to be confounded with its '' prac- 
tical " or commercial value. 

It cannot be doubted, in fact, that Hegel 
is entirely justified in saying* that " Arith- 
metic considers numbers and their corre- 
sponding figures ; or rather, does not con- 
sider them but only operates with them. 
For numbers constitute no more than a 
neutral characteristic, something alto- 
gether inert ; they have to be made effect- 
ive through outward means and thus 
brought into actual relation." In fact the 
* Op. cit., 227. 



Instruction — Its Means — A. Language. 149 

whole of arithmetic consists of the various 
modes of reckoning ; and these are noth- 
ing else than the simple, special ways of 
bringing numbers into relation one with 
another. And we may add that when the 
'' examples " are set aside and the actual 
description and explanation of the pro- 
cesses are given by themselves, the small- 
ness of the compass of this remainder 
practically demonstrates the extreme sim- 
plicity of the theme, while the number of 
the examples shows how literally true it is 
that in this study there is for the most part 
only prolonged repetition of one and the 
same thing. 

We are bound to repeat, therefore, that 
it is the commercial rather than the edu- 
cational value of arithmetic that gives it 
so prominent a place in the course of 
study. This once clearly recognized, it is 
evident that the movement toward restrict- 
ing this study to narrower limits in the 
schools has full pedagogical justification. 

And as for Algebra, we need only re- 
mark for our present purpose that it is, as 



150 HegeFs Educational Ideas. 

Newton named it, only a Universal Arith- 
metic, and hence, only a higher, subtler 
form of the grammar of the language of 
abstract numerical quantity. 

(c) Form aiid Substance in Language . 
Before taking final leave of the subject of 
Language, we must notice that, as here 
considered, it includes the whole range of 
what has generally been regarded as the 
substance of elementary education. In 
other words, we have passed under review 
the familiar '' three R's " — Reading, Writ- 
ing, and Arithmetic, as the universal as- 
pects of language considered as the 
organic form of thought. 

We have, besides, noticed that these are 
to be considered from two complementary 
points of view — the one being that of inner 
substance, the other being that of outer 
form. And we have now further to em- 
phasize the fact that precisely for the pur- 
poses of elementary education these two 
aspects are altogether inseparable. It 
ought never to be forgotten that until 
Grammar, as the science of Language, is 



Instruction — Its Meajis — A. Language. 151 

formally entered upon, the exercises in 
language are predominantly of a sponta- 
neous, creative character, and the products, 
however crude they may be, are still es- 
sentially of the nature of art products. 

All education, as we cannot too often 
repeat, consists in the self-definition, or 
self-formulation, of the mind ; and the 
most direct, and subtle, and exact form 
which mind assumes in this process of self- 
formulation, is just Language. This is 
the real reason for the fact that among all 
peoples in all ages elementary education 
has ever consisted chiefly in language ex- 
ercises — in speaking, in reading, in writ- 
ing, in numbering. 

True, these have always been exercises 
in fonn, and from this point of view they 
might very properly be described as *' for- 
mal " studies. But, also, they are quite 
as much exercises in differentiating the 
substance of thought itself ; and hence 
may just as properly be described as ''sub- 
stantial " studies. What, indeed, can be 
more substantial for the mind than just 



152 HegeVs Educatiotial Ideas. 

the mind itself — the mind, manifesting it- 
self in its own subtlest modes, which are 
just the modes of thought realized in and 
through language ? Add to this, that the 
child-mind is wholly unable to separate, or 
even clearly to distinguish, between form 
and substance, and it will be evident that, 
in elementary education especially, these 
studies are far enough from being merely 
formal in their value. 

But yet another point ought to be men- 
tioned. It is that, in all the exercises 
tending toward the education or self-form- 
ulation of the individual mind, such mind 
is itself the substance formulated, the form- 
ulating principle, and the formative en- 
ergy — the ultimate aim being the fulfill- 
ment in the individual mind itself of the 
universal type to which it belongs. In 
other words, to repeat once more, the 
mind is nothing else, or less, than a sub- 
stantial, self-differentiating unit of energy, 
which bears within itself all the funda- 
mental aspects of cause, as these were 
traced out by Aristotle. For the mind as 



Instruction — Its Means — A. language. 153 

spontaneous energy is nothing else than 
efficient cause, giving form to its own 
substance ; and this to the final end of 
realizing within and for itself, just its own 
true nature. 

On the other hand, we have also to no- 
tice that, causal though it be in its very- 
nature, the individual mind still needs to 
be awakened to its own native, self-defin- 
ing activity, and depends for its awaken- 
ing upon its relations to the world of its 
'' environment." So that while in the pro- 
cess of education the chief place is rightly 
given to the various phases of language 
as constituting the most immediate aspects 
of the mind's own self-differentiation, yet 
that process must be altogether incom- 
plete, and hopelessly one-sided, were it not 
to include the careful study of the various 
aspects of the environment through which 
the mind is awakened to its own native, 
self-formulating activity. 

And here, too, the same principle of 
causation is manifest. For Matter (mate- 
rial cause), cannot really be conceived as 



154 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

something apart from definition (formal 
cause), nor as something apart from en- 
ergy (efficient cause). On the contrary, 
energy can really be conceived — i. e., ra- 
tionally thought — only as being in its ulti- 
mate nature self-active substance, which, 
precisely through its own self-activity, de- 
fines itself, or gives itself specific form. 
But such substantial, self-formative en- 
ergy cannot but be self-conscious energy, 
or Mind. 

Thus, in its ultimate nature, the world 
or the environment by which the individ- 
ual mind is awakened to its own self-de- 
fining activity, is itself nothing else than 
the outer form in and through which the 
eternal Mind is forever expressing itself 
as Mind. And this is the reason why the 
individual mind finds itself so much at 
home in its contact with its environment. 
For in this contact it has always had at 
least some dim premonition of the truth 
that somehow Nature is nothing else than 
the outer form in which the eternal Mind 
is forever revealing itself to the human 



histruction — Its Means — A. Language. 155 

mind, and that thus, in its interpretations 
of Nature, the human mind is only at- 
tempting to spell out that revelation, and 
in so doing is only going to school to the 
eternal Mind. And thus the whole range 
of what in current fashion are called " sub- 
stantial " studies, proves to be nothing else 
than the wider range of Language Lessons 
through which the individual mind is led 
up to still more adequate knowledge of 
Mind in its eternal, substantial, causal 
character. Nor should we forget that in 
this its highest character Mind finds by far 
its subtlest, most adequate expression in 
and through the human mind itself, partly 
as unfolded in institutions on the one hand 
and in language and literature on the 
other, but most of all as realized progres- 
sively in individual human lives. 

Hence, while Nature, and Institutions, 
and Literature are highly important as 
media of the child's development, the liv- 
ing teacher is of still greater importance 
— so much so that there is no exaggera- 
tion in Emerson's saying to the effect that 



156 HegeVs Educatio7ial Ideas. 

*' it matters less what you learn than of 
whom you learn." 

It is upon this presupposition on the 
part of the teacher, the presupposition, 
viz.y that the whole world of nature and 
of humanity constitutes one continuous, 
progressive, divinely constituted subject- 
matter or " course of study " — that all true 
educational work must proceed, and tow- 
ard the development of this convicton in 
reasoned form, on the part of the pupil, 
that all true educational work must tend. 

Thus far Hegel is fairly explicit as to 
the Matter, the Method, and the End of 
education considered on the intellectual 
side or the side of '' Instruction." What 
he would have said of the further phases 
which we have called Form and Process 
in the same sphere, is still more a matter 
of inference, and can here be indicated 
only in the briefest way. 



Instricction — lis Means — B. For??i. 157 

X. 

INSTRUCTION— ITS MEANS— B. FORM. 

Form, in the sense of the general and 
more or less abstract space-relations, serv- 
ing as means to education, appears in the 
received course of study under three as- 
pects : {a) Geography — the study of given 
concrete real forms ; iU) Geometry — the 
study of abstract ideal forms ; {c) Drawing 
— the study of concrete ideal forms. 

Geography is, first of all, the more or 
less detailed study of the actually existing 
concrete form of the earth as the habita- 
tion of man. It is thus of immediate /r^^- 
tical significance. 

Of this we have the direct antithesis in 
Geometry, which is the study of the uni- 
versal abstract relations true of all space 
in as far as space is simply a form of con- 
sciousness — relations, i. e., which are no- 
where realized as such, save in conscious- 
ness ; and this, primarily, in the eternal 



158 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

consciousness; secondarily in the human 
consciousness. In its immediate charac- 
ter, therefore, Geometry possesses no more 
than a purely " theoretical " significance. 

These two antithetical aspects of the 
study of form may be said to find their 
unity in Drawing, which takes into consid- 
eration, and accepts as valid, the universal 
laws of form revealed in Geometry, and 
applies these laws in the idealization and 
representation of the forms concretely 
presented in Nature. It is through such 
application of the (consciously or uncon- 
sciously recognized) laws of form in the 
deliberate idealization and representation 
of actually given forms that what are 
known as Ideals of Beauty become exphcit 
in consciousness. 

Geography gives us actual forms ; Ge- 
ometry reveals to us the laws of form ; 
Drawing develops ideal forms. 

Even in such brief summary — and partly 
because of its brevity — the educational 
value of each of these aspects of Form is 
already fairly apparent. To this, how- 



Instriictioii — Its Means — B. Form. 159 

ever, we must add a few further intima- 
tions: 

{a) Geography, it is true, is of immediate 
practical significance. But that is not its 
educational significance. The latter, as 
we must never forget, is to be sought, in 
any study, in the value which that study 
has ^j a means to the development of mind. 
The so-called " practical " significance can 
at most but lend an extrinsic interest, 
which serves to intensify — though also it 
is only too likely to confuse — whatever 
mental exercise is involved in the given 
study and which tend to the development 
of the mind of the pupil. 

What, then, is the actual educational 
significance of the study of Geography ? 
Our answer is, that here, as in language, 
the immediate given concrete form is to 
be studied as the form of a definite sub- 
stantial thought. Thus, evidently, this study 
necessarily involves in its actual develop- 
ment the recognition of certain universal 
aspects of space-relation (Mathematical 
Geography), implying and therefore lead- 



i6o HegeVs Ediicatiojial Ideas. 

ing over to Geometry, which may be called 
the Universal Grammar of Form ; and 
also implying and leading over (through 
maps and pictorial representations of nat- 
ural types, inorganic and organic), to 
Drawing, which is the elementary aspect 
of the Art Form. 

Not only so, but the study of geography 
necessarily involves the recognition of cer- 
tain universal aspects of Process, inorganic 
(Physics and Chemistry), organic (Botany 
and Zoology), and spiritual (Human His- 
tory) ; though, as we ought carefully to 
note, while geography involves these ref- 
erences, it does not and cannot include 
these sciences, but only presupposes them. 

But what is the central thought involved 
in the facts with which Geography deals, 
and hence to be evolved in the mind of 
the pupil through his study of Geography ? 
This thought is nothing else than what is 
often indicated by means of the term 
"■ orientation," and by this, again, is meant 
nothing else than the process of conscious 
self-adjustment to the actual present outer 



Instruction — Its Means — B. Form. i6r 

world as thus far the concrete expression 
of Reason. 

In Geography, strictly speaking, indeed, 
this process of orientation does not extend 
beyond its external aspect. But even this 
is by no means insignificant. Within this 
limit the pupil is brought to note the re- 
lative position and extent of land and 
water, the outlines of land-masses, the po- 
sition and elevation of mountain systems, 
the extent of plains, the conditions and 
extent of rain-fall on the one hand and 
of drainage on the other — the last two 
necessarily implying the relations sever- 
ally of given areas of land and water to 
the sun, together with the atmospheric 
currents due in part to this relation. 

All this observation of relation of part 
to part of the earth's surface, together 
with the relation of the whole with its 
parts to the sun, constitutes the outer 
form of an inner process, consisting of the 
development and orderly arrangement of 
a vast array of imagery in the mind of the 
pupil. And we may remark that while 
II 



1 62 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

the development of the imagery is the 
work of the mind as imagination, which is 
the highest aspect of the sensuous con- 
sciousness, the orderly arrangement of 
the imagery is the work of the mind as 
understanding, which is one of the more 
elementary phases of the reflective con- 
sciousness. 

It is through the study of Geography, 
then, that the child definitely enters upon 
the process of his own intellectual self-ad- 
justment to the thought of the world in as 
far as that thought is expressed in outer 
physical /<?r;/i? / though even here, let us 
repeat, through every fact he is brought 
face to face with relations which can be 
explained only through a study of the 
world as Process. 

But this is only the beginning. For, as 
already noticed, the study of Geography, 
strictly speaking, is only a preparatory 
step to the study of Man. Man, as we 
cannot too often remind ourselves, is, in- 
deed, ultimately the child of Divinity ; but 
he is so in such wise as to appear and be. 



Instruct ton — Its Means — B. Form. 163 

immediately, the child of Nature. Fur- 
ther, the child, as the growing man, can 
orient himself spiritually only through the 
regulated study of the human race ; for 
only in the race can he come to the clear 
apprehension of his own larger Self. Only 
through knowing Humanity can he come 
to adequately know himself as a human 
being. 

As the child of Nature, however, man 
can be comprehended only in relation to \ 
his natural environment ; so that while the 
study of man in the more elementary 
sense of the term — i. i\, from the point of 
view of anthropology — may be said to 
emerge out of physical geography, it at- 
tains its more positive educational signi- 
ficance in political geography. And this so 
much the more as the actually existing races 
of the world present in rough logical out- 
line the whole series of chronological stages 
through which the most advanced races 
must have passed in the attainment of their 
present superior degree of self-realization. 

Thus, Geography, as the elementary 



164 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

study of the concrete forms of Nature, is 
found to culminate in History, as the 
subtlest and most concrete Process of 
the world. Hence the impossibility of 
comprehending the history of any given 
people without careful and continuous ref- 
erence to the geographical conditions in 
the midst of which such people developed 
and expended their energies. 

But, as we have already noticed, while 
geography implies all the other sciences, 
and may even be said to be the premoni- 
tion of them, it still does not and cannot 
include them. True, as descriptive of the 
concrete outer world in which the pupil 
lives, geography serves as the means to 
the immediate or primary synthesis which 
he forms in his own mind of the world as 
a whole. On the other hand, the medi- 
ated, matured synthesis of the world, he 
can arrive at only through the analytical 
processes involved in the study of the va- 
rious sciences, held in sharp distinction 
one from another. 

These various aspects of the outer and 



Instruction — Its Means — B. Form. 165 

the inner world must therefore be taken 
up separately, and considered each within 
its own specific limits, if we would avoid 
endless confusions in our educational work. 

{b) Geometry, as the study of the uni- 
versal abstract laws of space-relations, has 
the special pedagogical value of accustom- 
ing the mind to insistance upon absolute 
precision of results in each and every case, 
whether in one's own work or in the work 
of others. Such habit of mind is, of course, 
of inestimable value in all studies. 

Meanwhile it is not to be overlooked 
that the exactness demanded is exclusively 
quantitative, and that to the qualitative 
aspects of concrete forms Geometry is 
wholly indifferent. This is the limitation 
which constitutes at once its defect and its 
perfection. — Its defect, because unless the 
complementary aspect of quality is other- 
wise emphasized in the education of the 
pupil, the habit of demanding absolute 
quantitative precision must grow into a 
rigid formalism, tending to the final arrest 
of all further development. — Its perfec- 



1 66 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

tion, because only by abstracting from 
quality and attending to quantity alone is 
such absolute precision possible at all. 

And yet, even here the germ of qualita- 
tive difference is not altogether wanting, 
the *' properties " of the triangle being dif- 
ferent from those of the circle, those of a 
circle being different from those of a 
square, etc., etc. 

It may be added that the very aspect of 
precision presented in Geometry, together 
with the simplicity of its more elementary 
degrees, renders this special phase of the 
study of Form peculiarly well adapted to 
the requirements of elementary education. 
On the one hand, the simplicity of the 
figures of plane Geometry must tend to 
put a wholesome check upon the wild ex- 
uberance of childish imagination ; while 
the precision of such forms and of the re- 
lations involved in them must tend to ren- 
der judgment more exact. 

At the same time, as has been noticed 
in what precedes. Geometry is already im- 
plied in that aspect of Geography known 



Instruct ion —Its Means — B. Form, 167 

as " mathemathical ; " though for the child 
this appears only in germinal form, in the 
simple names and descriptions of the cir- 
cle, sphere, diameter, etc., and involves no 
actual instruction upon the properties of any 
geometrical figure. And if ** triangulation " 
appears in map-drawing, this again, as need 
hardly be mentioned, involves no actual in- 
struction in Geometry, properly speaking. 
if) As noticed above, Drawing accepts 
as valid the universal laws of form as re- 
vealed in Geometry, or the Grammar of 
Form, and so applies these laws in the 
idealization and representation of the 
actual forms in Nature as to develop 
Ideals of Beauty. We have now to add 
that in the history of the race Drawing 
(including modeling) has developed a world 
of idealized forms, which for the purposes of 
education are forms already at hand to be 
imitated by the pupil — models upon which 
his taste may be developed into ever 
higher degrees of realization, with the as- 
surance that it will thus be enriched with 
those elements that constitute whatever is 



1 68 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

essential in the best products of the race. 
Thus, as Geography consists in the study 
of the concrete forms produced by nature, 
and serving as the immediate outward 
conditions of the hfe of man, so Drawing 
consists in the study of and the attempt to 
reproduce the ideal forms produced by 
man himself, and expressing thus one es- 
sential phase of the inner life of the human 
spirit. Such study, again, cannot but re- 
sult in the development and orderly ar- 
rangement of a vast array of imagery be- 
longing to the Ideal World, and preparing 
the pupil for productive work of higher or 
lower degree on his own part. 

And here, too, as in Geography, the 
production of the imagery is the work of 
the imagination, while the orderly arrange- 
ment of the imagery is the work of the 
understanding. But there is this differ- 
ence : that the imagery in the realm of 
Geography is limited to the sphere of Na- 
ture, the forms in which are more or less 
accidental, so far as the element of beauty 
is concerned ; while in the field of art the 



Instruct ion — Its Means — B. Form. 169 

forms are the conscious products of the 
human spirit stirred to utmost eagerness 
of effort for the purpose of satisfying its 
own inherent, irrepressible demand for 
perfection in Beauty. 

It is these latter products, therefore, 
which serve best of all as the models upon 
which to form the taste of the developing 
individual mind. But also it is important 
to remember that the really worthy ideals 
of Beauty have always had a religious core. 
In which case we may well accept as sub- 
stantial truth the statement that '' Out of 
the perfection of Beauty God hath or- 
dained the world."* And because on the 
human side religion is essentially ethical, it 
may very well be said that really good taste is 
nothing else than Morality bccovie bcaiitiftil. 

Hence the teaching of Drawing, includ- 
ing, as it ought to include, the study of the 
vital historical elements in the great art- 
products of the world, involves pedagogi- 

* Such thought is at least suggested by Psalms 
L. , 2; " Out of Zion the perfection of Beauty, God 
hath shined forth." 



I70 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

cal values, not merely of a formal, intellec- 
tual character, but also of a character 
which is essentially ethical. 

Rightly estimated and conducted, there- 
fore, this study, which deals in the ideal ele- 
ments having their roots in the ethical and 
the religious world, cannot but point for- 
ward to the study of these more concrete 
spheres of human development as an actual 
Process. 



Instruction — C. TJie Study of Process. 171 

XL 

INSTRUCTION — ITS MEANS — C. THE 
STUDY OF PROCESS. 

We have next to notice the educational 
significance of the study of Process as ex- 
pressive of the essential relations of the 
Energy unfolding itself in the actual 
world. This presents itself under the gen- 
eral forms: {a) Inorganic Processes; {b) 
Organic Processes, and {c) the Process of 
Human History. And here our limits 
render still more hopeless any attempt to 
do more than barely intimate the educa- 
tional significance of the themes named. 

(a) It must be frankly admitted that 
Hegel was less happy in dealing with the 
world of Nature than in dealing with the 
world of man. So that while it may be 
said without exaggeration that his Logic 
is the most compact aud rigidly consistent 
statement ever given of the essential prin- 
ciples of Evolution, yet his attempt to ap- 
ply those principles in the realm of Nature 
proved a conspicuous failure. 



172 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

At the same time his work in this field 
is not without valuable suggestions ; and 
if in details his Philosophy of Nature must 
be rejected as arbitrary, yet the general 
conception of nature as the precondition 
of human history, and as an orderly devel- 
opment leading up to and culminating in 
human life, is the fundamental thread of 
the whole, and must, therefore, be taken 
as indicating his real view of the proper 
significance of the natural sciences in a 
course of study. 

Of the soundness of such pedagogi- 
cal clew no one to-day is likely to entertain 
a doubt. And, in fact, Hegel's general 
philosophical theory, rightly understood 
and applied, may be said to furnish the 
one clew to a thoroughly consistent and 
completely satisfactory interpretation of 
the results to which modern science has 
attained."^ Nor can there be a reasonable 

*The present writer has attempted an interpreta- 
tion of these results from this point of view in a vol- 
ume entitled : The World-Energy and its Self -Con- 
servation, published by S. C. Griggs &Co., Chicago. 



Instruction — C. T/ie Study of Process. 173 

question that such interpretation is in- 
dispensable, above all, to the teacher of 
science, of whatever department or grade. 
For upon this largely must depend whether 
the pupil shall be satisfied with a crude 
materialistic view of the world, or whether 
he shall be led to comprehend ''matter" 
as nothing else than a mode of the univer- 
sal Energy which in its highest term is the 
absolute creative Spirit or divine Mind. 

The latter, as Hegel would unquestion- 
ably urge, is the one legitimate conclusion 
to which the study of inorganic processes 
should lead. 

{b) Similarly, the teacher of science 
within the realm of the organic, ought to 
be able to bring the pupil to recognize in 
the whole process of Nature, the endlessly 
manifold evidences of one all-comprehen- 
sive Method leading up from the inorgan- 
ic, through the organic, to Man. And 
further he ought to be able to bring the 
pupil to see in this Method the proof that 
Mind is the source and substance of the 
world, and that, as the primal Life, the 



174 HegcVs Educational Ideas. 

eternal Mind in its self-unfolding, cease- 
lessly gives birth to every form of life. 

To which it must be added that the di- 
rect pedagogical value of the natural sci- 
ence studies consists in the first place in 
the development of what is commonly 
known as the power of observation. This 
power, more closely examined, is found to 
have for its immediate factors. Perception 
on the one hand and Judgment (as the 
critical aspect of the understanding) on 
the other. And it is to be carefully noted 
that observation for the purposes of Sci- 
ence is different from observation for the 
purposes of Art. In both it is demanded 
that the observation shall be as exact as 
possible — /. e., that the percepts* formed 
shall be accurate in the highest attainable 
degree. 

But in observation for scientific ends, 
the actual process of perception is brought 
into definite and strict subordination to 
the deliberate exercise of judgment con- 

* In its outer or objective aspect a percept is a 
" mental image." 



Instruction — C The Study of Process. 175 

cerning the essential inner relations deter- 
mining the given outer form ; while in 
observations for the purposes of art, 
though the power of perception is also 
exercised under the direct control of judg- 
ment, it is nevertheless judgment in that 
spontaneous aspect known as Taste. And 
in this peculiar character its exercise has 
for direct end to create a form of the same 
type as that of the given observed form, 
but with the difference that it shall be 
raised to the degree of ideal perfection as 
form. 

Nor should it be forgotten that in sci- 
ence the ultimate aim is to satisfy the de. 
mand of the mind for perfection in utility, 
while in art the aim is to satisfy the de- 
mand of the mind for perfection in Beauty. 

Such psychological distinctions cannot 
be too vividly present in the mind of the 
teacher, since they must have a control- 
ling influence in his pedagogical methods 
and must thus radically influence the de- 
velopment of the mind of the pupil. 

But again in the second place, natural 



176 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

science studies have this pedagogical val- 
ue : that in deaHng directly with modes of 
energy as manifested through inorganic 
forms, the pupil is brought to positively 
exercise and to definitely measure his own 
powers, and thus to further his own self- 
development as Will. And this is true in 
a still subtler way in dealing with organic 
forms, such as putting seeds in the earth 
and watching the growth of plants, and 
noting the effect of his own work upon 
their development. 

Here, indeed, is a specially fruitful field 
for practical self-definition on the part of 
the individual pupil, through his own reg- 
ulated and hence increasingly conscious 
self-adjustment to the actual modes of the 
creative Mind as manifest in Nature. It 
is in this stern school of Nature, as it is 
well worth while to notice, that the agri- 
culturist develops that keen shrewdness 
and subtle ^' common sense " which so 
often has the appearance of prophetic in- 
stinct. 

{c) But without further remark upon 



Instruct wn — C. TJie Study of Process. 177 

this special theme, tempting as it is, we 
must turn to the third phase of Process, 
viz., to that specially complex and subtle 
mode of energy manifest in human his- 
tory. Here Hegel is at his best. Not 
only does he conceive Nature to be the 
simple divine process culminating in man ; 
to him the history of the human world is 
itself also, as we have seen, nothing else 
than " progress in the consciousjiess of Free- 
dom." That is, the central, vital element 
in the history of mankind is essentially and 
solely of an educational character. 

At the same time, it is of the highest 
importance to notice, that in the definition 
of history just quoted, everything centres 
in the idea of Freedom, So that one 
might infer from this alone that for Hegel 
the educational value of the study of his- 
tory is essentially ethical in its character, 
while in comparison with this its value as 
an intellectual discipline is only second- 
ary. 

But here again human history is by no 
means to be considered merely as a rec- 



178 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

ord. On the contrary, it is to be consid- 
ered, above all, as an actual Process. The 
study of history is not the study of a 
book ; it is the study of a process by 
means of a book. The book is merely a 
compound lens through which the events 
of the world are brought into focus for 
the individual pupil so that he may view 
them in their true perspective. 

In such wise, the indvidual, even una- 
wares, develops an ideal or universal 
standard of judgment by which to esti- 
mate the events of his own time as well as 
his own conduct and that of others. 

Deeper than this, however, is the edu- 
cational significance of the various institu- 
tions in and through which the universal 
spirit of humanity has unfolded itself. It 
is only through these institutions, in fact, 
that genuine Freedom can be attained at 
all on the part of the individual. For 
Freedom is a universal quality inhering in 
man as man. That is, it pertains to the 
universal or divine nature of man as a 
spiritual or personal being. It is Freedom 



Instri(ction—C. The Study of Process. 179 

in this universal, positive, concrete sense, 
which Hegel describes as Freedom of the 
one in the other, and which, as he says, 
unites men in a manner which is essen- 
tially internal or spiritual ; whereas, mere 
distress, or momentary need, only brings 
men together in a fashion that is wholly 
external and accidental, the groups dis- 
solving as soon as the danger is ended, or 
the need satisfied.^ 

It is just this ethical aspect of institu- 
tional life that above everything else needs 
to be brought vividly home to the con- 
sciousness and conscience of the youth of 
our time. And where else will one find 
such searching analysis of the various 
forms of associated human life, or such 
adequate application of their central, posi- 
tive elements as in Hegel's PJiilosopJiie 
des Rechts\ to say nothing of his Phil- 
osophy of History f 

We can here give no more than the 

* Cf Werke, VII2., 276. 

f Abridged Trans, by J. McBride Sterrett, under 
the title : The Ethics of Hegel. 



l8o HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

barest intimations, the central idea being 
that all institutions educate through the 
subtle means of custom, which is nothing 
else than the Reason of the race become 
organic, and thus far actual, without hav- 
ing yet emerged from its instinctive or 
unreflecting form. 

(i) In the Family the child learns lan- 
guage and begins the formation of his 
habits upon the model of custom as rep- 
resented in the manners and requirements 
of the given household. These are deter- 
mined in detail by the class and essen- 
tially by the race to which the family 
group pertains. 

(2) In the State these customs begin to 
assume a reflective form in Laws; which, 
however, are still given out by authority 
and without further reason than that of 
custom, of which they are the more ex- 
plicit formulation. So that the individual 
who adjusts himself to custom is by that 
fact already a '' law-abiding citizen." 

At the same time, the state restrains 
the individual who assumes to disregard 



Instruction — C. The Study of Process. i8i 

its laws ; and this secures to the docile 
(teachable) individual, the negative free. 
dom which consists in absence of external 
hindrance in his self-adjustment to custom 
as the actual, present, and presumably 
rational, world-order ; such order never 
ceasing to bring to bear upon him its 
pressure or stimulus, yielding to which he 
attains to consistent and at least approxi- 
mately rational, self-definition. 

(3) In addition to these institutions, the 
Church is also ceaselessly as well as more 
explicitly, and upon still higher grounds, 
urging upon the individual the necessity 
of willingly adjusting himself to the actual, 
explicit form, which the Reason of the 
race has assumed. 

(4) But the School is the institution 
which has for its essential and specific 
function, to bring the individual to explic- 
it consciousness of the Laws of the world, 
both physical and spiritual, so that he may 
conform to these no longer as a mere 
matter of habit, but also as a matter of 
reflection ; being thus able to give not 



HegeVs Educational Ideas. 



merely a reason but a good reason for the 
faith that is in him. 

On the other hand, the school receives 
the child at an age when custom and au- 
thority are the only standards he can ap- 
preciate ; so that here the problem of the 
transition of the individual from the mere- 
ly instinctive and habitual, to the reflec- 
tive stage of his own adjustment to the 
rational order of the world as expressed 
in nature on the one hand and in human 
institutions on the other, attains its most 
explicit and complex degree. 

But just for this reason, the school pre- 
sents itself as the highest means to instruc- 
tion ; for it has deliberately reduced the 
whole process of education to a system. 
To this phase of the subject, therefore, we 
have next to turn. 



Instruction — Its Method. 183 

XII. 

INSTRUCTION — ITS METHOD. 

Upon this theme we need add but Httle 
to what has already been said in connec- 
tion with the Process of Instruction. And 
the first thing we have to say is that no- 
where else is the wholeness of Personality 
of such vital moment as in the teacher. 
Substantial natural gift, exact and ade- 
quate culture, positive force of refined 
character — these are the concrete aspects 
severally of "material, formal and efficient 
cause " which are the indispensable pre- 
requisites of the really good teacher. 

And it is the exact and adequate 
culture, constituting, as we have intimated, 
the phase of " formal cause," in which con- 
sists the essence of genuine vital MetJiod 
in teaching. Hence true and truly effec- 
tive methods of teaching are not to be 
prescribed and applied from without, but 



184 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

to be developed as vital, spontaneous 
modes from within. 

To this it should be added on the other 
hand that true methods are by no means 
** original " in the sense of being merely 
expressive of the notions peculiar to the 
individual teacher. On the contrary to be 
true, a method, like anything else, must be 
rational. It is not the individuality of the 
teacher that is to be insisted upon, but his 
personality. His methods, if they are to 
be valid, must be based, not in his individ- 
ual whims, but in universal Reason. 
Hence the supreme necessity of sound and 
well-rounded education on the part of the 
teacher. 

Meanwhile supervision can accomplish 
well-nigh the impossible through sugges- 
tion in respect of method. And the most 
vital aspect of this consists in the discov- 
ery, on the part of the supervisor, of latent 
gifts on the part of the individual teacher 
and the bringing the teacher to a conscious- 
ness of such gifts. The power of the 
teacher is thus increased not merely by 



Instruction — Its Method. 185 

explicit knowledge of the value of the 
method already unconsciously made use 
of, but also by the increased confidence, 
vigor and definiteness of work which such 
knowledge brings. 

In short the highest function of the su- 
pervisor is, not to '' originate" methods 
and prescribe them for others to follow 
unquestioningly. It is rather to discover 
the central element of true method already 
spontaneously unfolding in the mind of 
each individual teacher under his super- 
vision and to encourage and guide the 
teacher in the maturing of such inherent 
gift into its richest values. 

The complement of this is to be found 
in the use of the imitative instinct through 
the observation of the work of specially 
successful teachers by those less experi- 
enced and still in the plastic stage. 

Next to an autocratic, despotic negative 
criticism, which generally is made use of 
to conceal a barren intellect, nothing could 
be more deadly to educational interests 
than ready-made and elaborately worked 



1 86 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

out '' methods " prescribed for the sake 
and to the extent of actual uniformity. 
For this could only result in arrest of per- 
sonal development on the part of the 
teachers affected, and this again could 
mean nothing else than the suspension of 
all vitality and the reduction of the whole 
educational process to the dead level of 
mere monotonous mechanism — the utter 
cancellation of the consciousness of Free- 
dom through the annulment of Freedom 
itself in and for the individual. 

And now we must remind ourselves 
once more that Freedom is to be realized 
only through the ethical process of volun- 
tary action, the direct consideration of 
which constitutes the next subdivision of 
our theme. 



Discipline. 187 



XIII. 

DISCIPLINE. 

Respecting Discipline much has inevit- 
ably been anticipated. We have already 
noticed Hegel's dictum that just as the 
will begins in obedience, so also does 
thought ; that in fact obedience is the 
beginning of wisdom. 

Of course by such obedience Hegel 
means conscious conformity to Reason as 
such ; not mere blind submission, with 
which, indeed, he strongly contrasts obe- 
dience properly speaking. And yet the 
child must at first simply submit to exter- 
nal guidance — happy if the actual author- 
ity to which he submits prove rational 
in character ! 

It is not to be forgotten, either, that 
Hegel is in full accord with what in one or 
another form is the world-old doctrine 
that, as the child of nature, man is evil ; 
that is, that his immediate inclinations 



1 88 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

pertain to his animal nature, and that only 
through training and discipline can he be 
brought into the state of positive moral 
life. In this, indeed, he simply reproduces 
Kant's affirmation that '' Discipline or 
training transforms animality into human- 
ity* ; " an aphorism which Kant empha- 
sized by the further statement that '' Dis- 
cipline preserves man from falling away 
from his manhood through his animal ten- 
dencies." 

From this point of view it is but a mat- 
ter of course that Hegel should have little 
patience with the sentimental sympathy 
for mere childhood as such and which 
would at all cost please the child — elimin- 
ating law by substituting the child's caprice 
in place of law, and thus encouraging a 
mere self-seeking interest on the part of 
the child, which interest Hegel pronounces 
'' the root of all evil." On the contrary 
the child '' must learn to obey precisely 
because his will is not yet rational " or 
matured as will. 

* Werke.Y.., 383. 



Discipline. 



The purpose of the teacher, then, should 
not be merely to find out what the child hap- 
pens to be most easily interested in and be 
governed accordingly ; but to find out how 
the child can be brought to take interest in 
whatever pertains to his own normal ad- 
vancement. Thus the child, instead of be- 
ing humored and excused in respect of his 
irregularities, must be brought to prize 
order and punctuality. And this is to be 
done quietly and by a strict requirement 
which assumes the instinctive approval of 
the child's higher nature, and above all 
with not too much or too obtrusive com- 
manding and moralizing. For '* men who 
are early plunged into the dead sea of moral 
platitudes come out, indeed, like Achilles, 
invulnerable, but also with the addition 
that all manly vigor is drowned therein."* 

Along with this Hegel emphasizes the 
importance of silence as a form of self-re- 
straint and hence as an aspect of discip- 
line. It is an antidote to the disease of 

* Rosenkranz ; Hegcts Leben, p. 467. (Quoted 
from one of Hegel's addresses). 



190 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

volubility and mere egotistic argumenta- 
tion. At the same time this ought not to 
be applied too rigidly to very young chil- 
dren. For, as Richter says : " The heroic 
virtue of silence requires for its practice 
the power of ripening reason. Reason 
teaches us to be silent ; the heart teaches 
us to speak."* 

Closely connected with what has just 
been said is the fact that attention is quite 
as much a matter of will as of intellect. 
" I am really attentive only then when I 
will so to be." Though it by no means 
follows from this that attention is an easy 
thing. On the contrary it requires special 
effort to fix the attention upon some one, 
to the exclusion of all other, representa- 
tions which otherwise are equally present 
in consciousness. 

Perfect attention, in fact, is one of the 
phases of complete self-mastery ; and it is, 
for example, because of the value of mili- 
tary exercises in developing ready and 
full command over one's own powers, 

* Levana (Bohn Lib.), p. 336. 



Discipline. 191 

quite as much as from their significance in 
respect of patriotism, that Hegel would 
have all boys trained in such exercises. 
We are, he says, *' too much prone to con- 
sider every art and every science as some- 
thing specific ; " i. e., as something out 
of relation to other aspects of life. On 
the contrary all such exercises have their 
organic significance in the total round of 
media for the full development of the in- 
dividual, and this with respect both to his 
physical and to his spiritual nature. 

Thus obedience and attention are ne- 
cessary subjective modes which express 
themselves outwardly through definite, 
vigorous, sustained and purposeful action ; 
and the two aspects, outer and inner, are 
the complementary aspects of the devel- 
opment of actual Freedom, or self-deter- 
mination, on the part of the individual. 

Along with this, Hegel points out two 
aspects of discipline — outward training 
{Zuchf), and culture {Bildiing), or inward 
formative process. As an aspect of edu- 
cation, the former is to be taken in the 



192 HegeVs Edicc at tonal Ideas. 

sense of subduing the will of the child in 
so far as this appears in the form of mere 
wilfulness. And this is to be accomplished 
through the steady pressure of a wise, 
consistent, albeit kindly, aittJiority. To 
endeavor always to persuade the child that 
the thing required of him is something 
that will prove pleasing to him, is to per- 
vert his mind and confirm him in the be- 
lief that he ought to do nothing except 
what will give him pleasure in the doing.* 
On the contrary, as we have already 
noticed, Hegel explicitly calls attention 
to the fact that the parent, and next to 
the parent the teacher, constitutes for the 
child the present living embodiment of all 
that is universal and essential ; and for 
this reason the child cannot emerge out of 
childhood save by the more or less forbid- 
ding path of obedience ; that is, by being 
brought to subordinate his own will, as 
in itself crude and capricious, to the will 
of parent or teacher, as relatively matured 
and rational. 

*Cf. Werke, VIII., 231. 



Discipline. 193 



We might even say, then, that child- 
hood is the inferno of infinite lack and 
longing, out of which the individual can 
escape into the paradise of enriched and 
blessed existence only through the purga- 
torial pains and strains of Discipli)u\ \v\\\ch. 
for the child consist first of all in training. 

But while this phase of simple, unques- 
tioning obedience to authority is appro- 
priate to the rudimentary consciousness 
of cJiildhoodj the complementary phase, 
consisting of Bildung, or inner formative 
process, through which the individual ap- 
proximates maturity as a self-conscious, 
self-active being, is no less indispensable 
to the growing personality of the youth. 
In this connection Hegel has repeatedly 
called attention to the fact that the orien- 
tal mind never attains to the full sense of 
personality, and the dignity pertaining 
thereto, while the occidental mind is spe- 
cially characterized by self-consciousness, 
to which the individual very early attains 
in explicit form, and in ever-increasingly 
positive degree. 
13 



194 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

Hence, while in Asia discipline may 
very well consist chiefly in mere training, 
it is evident that in Europe and America 
this must early and rapidly give way to 
the far subtler form of discipline, consist- 
ing in the process of culture through which 
the sense of personal worth may be — not 
so much stimulated indeed, for here this 
develops spontaneously — but regulated and 
du'ectcd into rational chamieh. 

Besides, with the general progress of 
culture in these countries a great change 
has taken place in the general estimate of 
what precisely it is in which training, and 
especially school training, ought really to 
consist. " In proportion as education 
comes to be judged of from the right 
point of view — that is, in proportion as it 
comes to be understood, that in essence 
education is rather the confirmation than 
the repression of the awakened sense of 
selfhood ; that it is rather the positive, 
regulated unfolding of the spirit of inde- 
pendence — in like degree, both in the 
family and in the school, the whole mode 



D iscipline, 195 



of dealing with youth has undergone pro- 
gressive change."* 

This change consists essentially in em- 
phasizing less and less the importance of 
keeping up the feeling of subjection and 
dependence, even in respect of things 
which are in themselves indifferent. So, 
also, it is no longer assumed that there is 
special virtue in such instruction as has 
no other aim than that of cultivating the 
habit of obedience, nor that results which 
may be attained through the feeling of 
love, and through direct attention to, and 
serious interest in, the end the child or 
youth is seeking, would be in the least en- 
hanced in value by being reached through 
harsh measures and forbidding means. 

Meanwhile, Hegel does not forget, nor 
allow his readers to forget, that the social 
aspect is quite as real, and quite as valid, 
as is the individual aspect in the growth 
of human character. It is, in fact, just 
this social aspect that first begins to be 
emphasized for the youth precisely in the 
* Thaulow : Hegel s Ansic/iten, I., 100. 



196 HegeVs Educatio7ial Ideas. 

school. It is there that he begins to feel 
on the one hand the force of universal in- 
terests, and on the other the necessity of 
subordinating his own merely particular 
interests to the general welfare. By de- 
grees, also, he learns that this seeming 
sacrifice on his part, for what at first ap- 
pears to be merely the good of others, 
really proves to be nothing else than the 
putting away of whatever is unworthy of 
himself — his whims and childish fancies — 
and that, hence, it is but one aspect of 
the process of attaining that true freedom 
which is the central characteristic of ma- 
tured and maturing Personality. 

Nor is this all ; for since the rule of sac- 
rifice for the general good is universally 
applied, it turns out that each necessarily 
receives the benefit of the sacrifice of all. 
Each sacrifices what in truth is only harm- 
ful to himself. Each finds himself free to 
pursue his own highest purpose of self- 
development, because of like sacrifices on 
the part of all the others. 

In such fine form does the school pre- 



Discipline. 197 



sent, each day, each hour, that lesson, im- 
measurable in its significance, that every 
reasonable sacrifice the individual can be 
called upon to make for others must un- 
failingly result in his own good, as well as 
in the good of others. 

Clearly, then, punishment, either at 
home or in school, whether by depriving 
of what is desired, or inflicting what is 
dreaded, has no real ground of justifica- 
tion save that of bringing the child to a 
sense of the universal Right, in conflict 
with which his own deed is wrongs in the 
very fact that through such deed his own 
personality becomes distorted, or w?'iifig, 
out of its due form of moral comeliness. 
Punishment in anger, as mere vengeance, 
is simply monstrous. 

All this, again, suggest's Kant's sum- 
mary of the fundamental aspects of edu- 
cation, to the following effect : *' (i) Man 
must be disciplined. (2) He must be cul- 
tivated. (3) Care must be taken that in 
his development the individual shall attain 
to prudence, that he shall be led to take 



198 HegcVs Educational Ideas. 

his place in the social organism, that he 
shall come to be esteemed, and to have an 
influence [that is, to count for something 
in the world]. To this aspect there be- 
longs a special sort of culture which has 
come to be called civilizing. (4) Regard 
must be had to the end and mode of ren- 
dering the individual inoral^^ 

To this it is important to add, that the 
individual becomes truly moral, in the 
Kantian, in the Hegelian, in any really 
philosophic sense, only through clear com- 
prehension of, and direct personal adjust- 
ment to fundamental principles. The 
actual development of virtue, as Hegel 
expressly insists,f is not to be secured 
through some particular ethicality, or set 
of formulas, retailed by this or that indi- 
vidual, and warranted to apply without 
further trouble to all and sundry situa- 
tions. Such striving after the moral is 
spurious and profitless. 

On the other hand, Hegel never ceases 

* Werke, X., 390. 

f Cf. Werke, I., 399 and fol. 



Discipline. 199 



to insist that in its fullest meaning the ac- 
tual school of morality for the individual 
is nothing else than just the social world 
in its organic character of existing human 
institutions. On this point he quotes as a 
word of the wisest in antiquity, and as 
expressing the central truth of the matter : 
" ' Be moral,' means to live in accordance 
with the customs of one's own country " 
— /. <f., of course, the publicly recognized 
customs of the zuho/c country, 7iot the more 
or less disguised customs of this or that 
perverted neighborhood, or class, within 
that country. 

But we must turn abruptly from this as- 
pect of our theme — so deserving of ex- 
tended discussion — and hasten to the close. 



200 Herei's Educational Ideas. 



XIV. 

REFINEMENT. 

Under this heading we have first to re- 
mind the reader of the fact already no- 
ticed, that in his EncyclopcBdia of the Phil- 
osophic Sciences Hegel presents an outline 
of his whole system, intended directly for 
educational purposes. The Logic, as we 
may note again, indicates the fundamental 
principles of the system in universal, ab- 
stract form. The Philosophy of Nature 
represents his view of the outer evolutional 
process, which gives reality to the forms 
and forces and types of the outer world of 
space, and which thus leads up to the in- 
ner world of Mind. In the Philosophy of 
Mind he offers a sketch of the actual 
stages in the evolution of Mind, as at once 
Individual and Social. 

This latter again presents three funda- 
mental aspects : 

{a) Subjective Spirit (or Mind), This 



Refinement. 201 



again appears in three essential phases, 
(i) Anthropology, (2) Phenomenology, 
(3) Psychology. And we may here re- 
mark that it is to this simplest sphere 
of Mind that educational discussions are 
commonly confined ; in which fact may 
be seen the real reason why such dis- 
cussions bear so one-sidedly individual- 
istic an appearance, as far as concerns the 
explicit form of the theories developed. 
Hence the practically exclusive attention 
given to mere histriiction, and this as given 
in the School. 

{h) The second part of the Philosophy 
of Mind is devoted to what, in Hegel's 
phrase, is Objective Spirit (or Mind). 
Here Hegel deals with man in his social 
relations, (i) in Property. (2) Individ- 
ual Morality. (3) Social Morality. It is 
here, in fact, that we find the one substan- 
tial basis for rightly estimating the nature, 
the means, and the methods of Discipline 
in its full significance as a phase of edu- 
cation essential in itself and coordinate 
with Instruction. Coordinate, for if char- 



HezeVs Educational Ideas. 



acter without intelligence is crude, intelli- 
gence without character is demonic. 

(r) The third subdivision of the Philoso- 
phy of Mind has for its special theme : 
Absolute Spij'it (or Mind). This final sub- 
division presents again in ascending series 
the three subtlest aspects of spiritual evo- 
lution, viz., (i) Art, (2) Religion, and (3) 
Philosophy ; the latter finding its highest 
concrete interest in Theology. 

To which we have now to add that we 
have in this sphere the basis and demand 
for a third aspect of education, to which 
we have already given the name Refine- 
ment. 

And here we must restrict ourselves to 
barely indicating the general character of 
the theme in its three essential aspects. 

(i) Art is the highest sphere in the 
realm of the Beautiful. It is so because 
art-works are developed as the direct ex- 
pression of the inherent demand of the 
human mind for perfection in Beauty as ex- 
pressed in outer form. Nature is the search 
for rhythm. Man is discovered rhythm. 



Rejinement. 203 



Nature is Divinity going forth from him- 
self. Man is Divinity returning to him- 
seh". The Beauty of Nature is inarticulate. 
The Beauty of Art is articulate. The 
Beauty of Nature is limited to the work- 
ings of simple mechanical laws. Ths 
Beauty of Art is the rhythm of the divine 
Consciousness concretely unfolded in and 
through the human consciousness, as itself 
a divinely constituted nature, and hence 
the highest medium through which the 
eternal creative Mind gives expression to 
itself. Art is the finished product of the 
most perfectly matured taste ; and we 
have already noticed that true Taste is 
nothing else than Morality become beau- 
tiful. 

But thus Art, as the direct product of 
mind as mind, is but the expression of a 
universal demand of mind. It is but one 
aspect of the demand of the mind for 
Perfection. And Perfection is nothing else 
than this : Conformity of the Real zvit/i the 
Ideal. Not the individual's chance, capri- 
cious ''ideal," or mere momentary fancy; 



204 Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

but the universal, rational Ideal as in itself 
the abiding Type in any given sphere. 

Art thus constitutes one essential aspect 
in the education of the human mind. The 
developing individual mind has the abso- 
lute right to be brought face to face with 
each and every specific Type of the Beau- 
tiful which has charmed the growing divin- 
ity in man through all the ages. And this 
introduction can be accomplished only 
through the media of the finest products 
of human genius within this realm. 

But also this aspect of the education of 
the individual requires that he should test 
his own powers in the direction of produc- 
ing rhythmic forms. He must not be per- 
mitted to assume in any sphere the atti- 
tude of mere speetator. He must be accus- 
tomed also to regard himself as partici- 
pator in the actual process of the world. 
Hence is he given endless exercises in 
every department of his school-life. 

It is this deeper educational value as 
exercises of the pupil's inner spiritual 
powers that constitutes the ultimate justi- 



Refaie7}ient . 205 



fication for the time devoted to Drawing, 
to Music, and to the study of Literature 
in the schools. They are, first of all, 
media of Refinement, of the cultivation of 
Judgment in the subtle form of Taste 
which, in proportion as it becomes ma- 
tured, will spontaneously and unerringly 
select and rejoice in whatever is truly and 
nobly beautiful, whether in tone, or word, 
or deed, in all the world — and this is but 
one form of loving the truth and scorning 
a lie.* 

(2) But thus we are brought to notice 
that true art-products are but the imme- 
diate, formal and outward creations of an 
inward spiritual principle, of which again 
the vital essence is Religion. It is, in fact, 
one of the cardinal principles of Hegel 
that all art, properly speaking, has a relig- 
ious content. And this amounts to saying 

* For further information (in English) as to the 
Hegelian view of Art the reader is referred ioHegel's 
Philosophy of Art, translated by the present writer, 
who has also printed a volume on the Philosophy of 
Landscape Painting. 



2o6 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

that every attempt to separate between 
art and religious sentiment is nothing else 
than an attempt to separate between the 
outer Form of Beauty and its inner Sub- 
stance. 

Clearly, then, the cry of '■' art for art's 
sake," with which v/e have become so fa- 
miliar in our times, is merely a cry of 
'' form for form's sake." It is this cry that 
led the divinely beautiful Helen to forget 
that the soul of Beauty is actual ethical 
and religious life — forgetting which, as one 
specially significant version of the story 
tells us, she became herself the merest 
phantom. And this, indeed, is the story 
of the whole Greek world. For in pro- 
portion as their religious consciousness be- 
came reduced in vitality, their art lost 
poise, and became phantasmal. 

Religion is the essence of art because it 
is the essence of Life. But can religion 
be taught ? Upon this point Hegel de- 
clares that those who deny the practica- 
bility of making religion the object of in- 
struction, really fail to understand what it 



Refinejnent. 207 



is with which such instruction ought to 
begin. One has only to recognize that re- 
hgion has a positive inner content or sub- 
stantial significance, which not only can, 
but must be set forth, in actual outer or 
" objective " fashion — whether in art-forms 
or in the more definite forms of language 
to be convinced that thus far religion can 
be taught. 

On the other hand, stirring the heart, 
excitation of religious feeling — this is quite 
another thing. So far from being a form 
of instruction, this pertains to the elo- 
quence and pathos of preaching and can 
attain to nothing more than awaking the 
hearer to an interest in a given theme. 
All this is valid and of the highest value 
in itself, but it is not teaching. Besides, 
whatever the degree in which feeling may 
be excited, it is yet vague, and hence 
needs to pass through the differentiating 
process of definite cultivation and clarifi- 
cation through the media of teaching in 
the proper sense of the term. Sentiment 
must be raised to the higher power of 



2o8 HegeVs Educational Ideas. 

clearly defined positive doctrine. And so 
much the more, since, were religion to ex- 
ist merely as feeling, it must die away in- 
to a vague, dreamy, inner state that must 
become more and more incapable of out- 
ward manifestation either in any specific 
form or in any actual deed."^ 

Meanwhile, here as elsewhere, Hegel 
shows his alertness and self-poise in avoid- 
ing the temptation of the professional 
thinker to belittle feeling as if that were a 
less worthy phase of the life of mind. 
And especially does he note the pedagog- 
ical limitations involved in the question of 
the possibility of including Religion in a 
practical scheme of elementary instruc- 
tion. The child, he reminds us specifical- 
ly,f attains only to vorstellenden Denken; 
that is, to thinking that is still wholly in- 
volved in imagery. In fact, so far as his 
consciousness can be said to be explicit, 
the world exists only for his Vorstellung, 
for his power of representing the world 

* I Cf. Werke, XL, 130-160, and elsewhere, 
t Werke, VI I2., 97. 



Refinement. 209 



about him in forms derived from and ap- 
pealing diiectly to, the Imagination. 

It is evident, therefore, that while Heg- 
el regards religion as a proper object of 
instruction, and this to the full extent of 
the whole system of theology, he would 
restrict such instruction for children rather 
to the ethical aspects that can be repre- 
sented to the imagination through imagery 
and to such simple formulas as those in 
which the catechism consists. And we 
may add that because the noblest relig- 
ious ideas and sentiments have found 
their worthiest and sublimest sensuous ex- 
pression in the various books of the He- 
brew and Christian Bible, it is an absolute, 
inalienable right of every child to be made 
familiar with these forms, which only grow 
richer in content for the individual con- 
sciousness with each added year of his ex- 
perience in actual life. 

It was the world in its penny-wisdom 
that knew not God ; and so gave proof of 
its pound-foolishness. If Art is the out- 
ward form of Refinement, Religion is its 
14 



2IO Hegel's Educational Ideas. 

inner soul and vital substance. And edu- 
cation which fails to take this fact serious- 
ly into the account must itself become 
phantasmal. 

(3) Respecting Philosophy, we can add 
but a single word. Whether we regard it 
as the '' unification of knowledge " (Spen- 
cer), or as the ''thinking consideration of 
things" (Hegel) we are still discovering it 
to be the supreme effort made by the hu- 
man intelligence to grasp together all ob- 
jects of the Real World as constituting at 
the same time the objects of the Rational 
World. And this means that Philosophy 
is the name we give to the effort of the 
human mind to behold and account for 
all things in their actual, true relations, 
one to another. 

Evidently, then, all teaching presup- 
poses Philosophy, as all learning should 
lead up to it. For teaching consists 
essentially in the pointing out of relations, 
as learning consists in the tracing out of 
relations. And this includes the tracing 
out of relations between relations — that is. 



Rt'fDiemcnt. 



the progressive recognition of the relative 
significance of relations as involved in the 
whole scheme of the world, through which 
alone the relative (educational) values of 
things can be ascertained. 

From which this corollary is inevitable 
— that a course in sound philosophy ought 
to constitute an essential factor in the 
training of every teacher, and especially of 
every teacher who has to do with the in- 
struction of advanced pupils, or with the 
supervision of work in any grade. 

Such course ought to begin in rational 
Psychology as giving an account of the 
whole mind, including, by way of prelude, 
a summary view of anthropology, together 
with an account of the central character- 
istics of the brain and nervous system as 
the immediate organ of mind, and espec- 
ially of mind within the range of the sen- 
suous consciousness. 

The next stage in the course should 
consist of Logic in the sense of a careful 
study of the Laws, the Forms and the 
Method of Thought. 



212 HegcVs Educational Ideas. 

The third stage would present the prac- 
tical aspect — Ethics, in its individual, in 
its social and in its historical aspects. 

The fourth stage ought to render the 
student familiar with the general outlines 
of the History of Philosophy ; that is, a 
critical history of the successive phases in 
the evolutional process through which the 
human mind has passed in the interpreta- 
tion of the world as a whole. 

The fifth and culminating stage ought to 
consist in a thorough-going analysis which 
should also be a careful sympathetic study 
of one great ivork constituting the central 
ganglion of one of the great constructive 
Systems of Philosophy, and which would 
put the student in definite possession of 
an adequate and consistent organon or 
method for all his future work. 

And if this is true of all teachers in gen- 
eral, only so much the more must it be 
true of those teachers who have the infin- 
itely responsible task of teaching actual or 
prospective teachers. 

To which we may add that (to quote 



Refinement . 2 1 3 



another of Hegel's happy definitions) 
Philosophy seriously pursued is just ''a 
perpetual service of God ; " for first of all 
it raises to the highest degree attainable 
for the individual the self-defining process 
of the mind and thus assures the highest 
measure of precision in the self-realizing 
process of mind, the unfailing outcome of 
which must be the unfolding of that rich 
rhythm of Refinement that constitutes the 
central charm in a truly worthy Life. 

Yet one thing is lacking in the enumera- 
tion of the requirements which Hegel 
would make of the Teacher. It is that he 
should not depend upon his own mere per- 
sonal gifts as these chance to develop into 
more or less one-sided method ; nor yet 
upon imitation of this or that favorite 
teacher ; but that he should become famil- 
iar with the whole course of the History 
of Education as such. It is thus alone 
that he can hope to escape falling into 
errors of greater or less gravity. Nor 
can he otherwise avail himself of the dis- 



214 HegcVs Educational Ideas. 

coveries and achievements of the race in 
the process of guiding and stimulating in- 
dividual human minds in that struggle 
towards maturity that ends only in God. 



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'ss3y9N03 JO Ayvyan 



ntfS'^.'I^Y O"" CONGRESS,- 

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019 847 



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